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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26247544">Troubadour: FFXIV Write 2020</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Semilune/pseuds/Semilune'>Semilune</a>, <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Semilune/pseuds/The%20Rose%20Mistress'>The Rose Mistress (Semilune)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Hear, Feel, Think [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Final Fantasy XIV</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Awkward First Times, Biting, Cid &amp; Nero &amp; the Scions making this more wholesome, Come Eating, Complicated Relationships, Cunnilingus, Dancing, Dreams and Nightmares, Dubious Consent Fantasy, Emotional Constipation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Everyone Needs A Hug, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, F/M, First Kiss, Flirting, Fluff and Smut, Foreplay, Foreshadowing, Friendship/Love, Gratuitous Use of In-Game Dialogue, Heartbreak, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Ishgard is where the heart is, Jealousy, Lust, M/M, Mild Praise Kink, Multi, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Nostalgia, Obsession, Oral Sex, Patch 5.0: Shadowbringers Spoilers, Polyamorous Triad, Polyamory, Prayer, Queer Themes, Reminiscing, Resolved Sexual Tension, Rough Sex, Scion family shenanigans, Sex, Sexual Fantasy, Slice of Life, Star-crossed, Storytelling, Symbolism, Tension, Tumblr: FFXIVwrite, Tumblr: FFXIVwrite2020, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Unresolved Tension, Voyeurism, Wishes, a LOT of figuring out historical G'raha/WoL, absolutely shameless use of in-game quotes, brief alternate universe, gay pining, heart eyes @ Minfilia Warde, liminal spaces, mainly a WoL x G'raha love story, my final fantasy experience revolves around Estinien &amp; Aymeric and I'm not ashamed, my poor WoL is so closeted, non-heteronormative lifestyles, prompt #10 with very light dubcon for "too much excitement makes consent unclear", scion family drama, textual edging on a vocabularic level (© cethys), unspoken feelings, you get a POV! and you get a POV! and you get a POV!</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 02:33:45</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>40,924</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26247544</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Semilune/pseuds/Semilune, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Semilune/pseuds/The%20Rose%20Mistress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt #30: "Splinter."  5.3+ spoilers.  Beware.<br/>Gently NSFW.<br/>Aymeric/WoL/Estinien, the Ishgard Sandwich, + G'raha Tia, + Scion friendship.</p><p>Her heart was racing already.  It began to race faster.  “Vassalage seems a far cry from Lord Exarch.”</p><p>G’raha braced his full weight against the wall and crossed his ankles, close enough to share static.  “So it would seem.”  His long copper fringe fell into his eyes.  “But that old man was ever a villein—thrall to the whims of his heart, ever after.”</p><p>★ Chapter one is ToC.</p><p>NSFW content inside, 18+ ONLY.<br/>Content varies from fluff to smut to Feelings with a capital F (sometimes all at once).<br/>Many chapters are sequential.  Most are related to each other.<br/>Fills include a mini slow-burn CT questline longfic with several sequential chapters!</p><p>✦ SPOILERS UP TO SHADOWBRINGERS PATCH 5.3.<br/>Connects back to my body of works as noted in the text.<br/>Sorry for potential OOC in advance; I'm truly trying to post without editing!</p><p>FFXIVWrite Challenge run by @sea-wolf-coast-to-coast on tumblr!<br/></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Alphinaud Leveilleur &amp; Warrior of Light, Aymeric de Borel/Estinien Wyrmblood, Aymeric de Borel/Warrior of Light, Aymeric de Borel/Warrior of Light/Estinien Wyrmblood, Cid nan Garlond &amp; Nero tol Scaeva, G'raha Tia &amp; Cid nan Garlond, G'raha Tia &amp; Nero tol Scaeva, G'raha Tia | Crystal Exarch/Warrior of Light, Minfilia Warde &amp; Warrior of Light, Tataru Taru &amp; Warrior of Light, Warrior of Light &amp; Thancred Waters, Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV)/Original Character(s), Warrior of Light/Estinien Wyrmblood, Y'shtola Rhul &amp; Warrior of Light</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Hear, Feel, Think [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/862848</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>233</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>120</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>#FFxivWrite2020 Final Fantasy 30 Day Writing Challenge, Emet-Selch's Wholesomely Debauched Bookclub FFXIV-Writes 2020 Collection</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Table of Contents</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Giving this another shot!</p>
    </blockquote><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>All of this riffs hard on my body of works surrounding my WoL, Samantha, especially <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/12599668/chapters/28699292">Astral Fire, Umbral Heart</a>, and <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/19782502/chapters/46832398">Interscintillance</a>.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>❦ Foreword ❦</strong>
</p><p>My second attempt at a FFXIV Write Challenge!</p><p>There is no plan!  Only the desire to weave words and share them!</p><p>Thank you, as always, for reading.</p><p> </p><hr/><p>
  <strong> ☙ Table of Contents ❧</strong>
</p><hr/><p>✧ ☽ <strong>Troubadour</strong> ☾ ✧</p><ol>
<li>
<strong>Table of Contents</strong><br/>You are here!<br/><br/>
</li>
<li>
<strong>Prompt #1: Crux<br/></strong>: a puzzling or difficult problem : an unsolved question.<br/>: a main or central feature (as of an argument).<br/><br/>”T,” named fWoL/G’raha. Nights in Mor Dhona during CT. Feelings, nostalgia, mildly abstract.<br/><br/>"Turn love to truth?" "Or vice versa."<br/><br/>
</li>
<li>
<strong>Prompt #2: Sway<br/></strong>: sovereign power, dominion<br/>: to exert a guiding or controlling influence on<br/>: the ability to exercise influence or authority<br/>: to fluctuate or veer between one point, position, or opinion and another<br/><br/>"E," multiple relationships. Several snippets from pre-1.0 Calamity to pre-patch 5.3.<br/><br/>Heavenly bodies that held her in their influence.  "Let me help you."<br/><br/>
</li>
<li>
<strong>Prompt #3: Muster<br/></strong>: to call forth<br/>: an act of assembling<br/>: critical examination<br/>: a representative specimen<br/><br/>"G," WoL &amp; Minfilia.  Thancred POV.  Early ARR, very soft.<br/><br/>Closeness.  He never allowed it.  Not for himself.<br/>But he would permit himself to relish from a distance.<br/><br/>
</li>
<li>
<strong>Prompt #4: Clinch<br/></strong>: embrace<br/>: to hold fast or firmly<br/>: to make final or irrefutable<br/><br/>"T," maybe gently "M."  G'raha/WoL reminiscence and brief WoL/Aymeric.  WoL POV.<br/><br/>"Perfect," G'raha breathed.  He whirled to face Samantha.  "Dance with me."<br/>It was not a request.<br/><br/>
</li>
<li>
<strong>Prompt #5: Matter of Fact</strong><br/>: adhering to the unembellished facts<br/>: being plain, straightforward, or unemotional<br/><br/>Continues in the CT flashback timeline from chapter prior.<br/><br/>"M," sexual tension.  G'raha/WoL, G'raha POV.<br/><br/>A tight and wondering silence rose between them then, hope and fear and friction.<br/>They circled each other the whole of the season, attracted by gravity, afraid to be overwhelmed.<br/><br/>
</li>
<li>
<strong>Prompt #6: Free Day/Ocular</strong><br/>: of or relating to the eye<br/>: done or perceived by the eye<br/>: based on what has been seen<br/><br/>Continues in the CT flashback timeline from chapter prior.<br/>"M" for sexual tension and some gently explicit content.  WoL/G'raha, G'raha POV.<br/><br/>"How many nights," and his throat was closing, his words bereft of all bravado, "I dreamt of touching you like this."<br/><br/>
</li>
<li>
<strong>Prompt #7: Nonagenarian</strong><br/><strong class="mw_t_bc">: </strong>a person whose age is in the nineties<br/>: of or relating to a nonagenarian<br/><br/>Slightly later in the CT flashback timeline continued from chapters prior. <br/><br/>EXTREMELY NSFW, 18+. G'raha WoL, G'raha POV.<br/>Warning for night terrors, dark fantasy imagery, sexual content, gentle pain/hurt/comfort.<br/><br/>The more I learn of the Crystal Tower, the less I am myself.</li>
<li>
<strong>Prompt #8: Clamor</strong><br/>: to make a din<br/>: a loud continuous noise<br/>: to become loudly insistent<br/>
<p>Continues from previous chapter.</p>
<p>More references that are NSFW, 18+.<br/>G'raha/WoL, starting with WoL POV, and then G'raha POV.</p>
<p>She was gone from the outpost.<br/>She was never gone from the outpost.</p>
</li>
<li>
<strong>Prompt #9: Lush</strong><br/>: appealing to the senses<br/>: characterized by abundance<br/>: savory, delicious, opulent, sumptuous<br/><br/>Continues to continue from prior.<br/><br/>Some gentle NSFW, mostly humor and friendship.<br/>G'raha Tia POV. G'raha/WoL, Scion friendship. I love Thancred.<br/>
<p>The Warrior of Light, Samantha Rosalyn Floravale, was a book thief, and Thaliak help him—<br/>G’raha had never been more attracted.</p>
</li>
<li>
<strong>Prompt #10: Avail</strong><br/>: to be of use or advantage : serve<br/>: to make use of : to take advantage of<br/>: to produce or result in as a benefit or advantage : gain<br/>: advantage toward attainment of a goal or purpose<br/><br/>Extremely, extremely NSFW. Continues from prior.<br/>Very light dubcon in the sense of "two people so mindlessly thrilled to make contact that full terms of consent are unclear."<br/><br/>G'raha/WoL. G'raha POV.<br/>
<p>Her whine was a reverent whisper.  “Who let you be so beautiful?”<br/>"Merciful heaven,” he breathed. "Merciful something—to make you want to look on me and say it.”</p>
</li>
<li>
<strong>Prompt #11: Ultracrepidarian</strong><br/>: noting or pertaining to a person who criticizes, judges, or gives advice outside the area of his or her expertise<br/><br/>Gently NSFW, 18+.<br/>Continues from chapters prior. More G'raha/WoL, G'raha POV mostly.<br/>
<p>“Do mine ears deceive,” he tried to school his voice into a jest, “Or have I found a cohort?”<br/>She pursed her lips again.  “Associate.”<br/>“Accomplice.”  He leaned back in the chair, and her eyes raked down his body.<br/>He preened at the attention.</p>
</li>
<li>
<strong>Prompt #12: Tooth and Nail</strong><br/>: with all one's resources or energy; fiercely<br/><br/>NSFW, 18+. YES EXTREMELY. G'raha/WoL, G'raha POV, basically continued from prior.<br/>CT story referenced. Gentle unwanted jealousy. All kinds of oral sex. Mild come eating.<br/>
<p>She trembled.  Curled further.  “Your mouth,” came the quiet confession.  “I—can’t stop thinking about it.”<br/>Deafening static was back in his ears.  The mouth in question malfunctioned, twice before he could wrangle a sound.  “Ah.”</p>
</li>
<li>
<strong>Prompt #13: Free Day/Sin</strong><br/>: transgression of divine law<br/>: to commit a sinful act; to perform sinfully<br/>: any act regarded as such a transgression, especially a willful or deliberate violation of some religious or moral principle<br/><br/>I'm a sucker for parallels.<br/>G'raha/WoL, mainly WoL POV. Dreams. Dark fantasy imagery and violence.<br/>
<p>It blurs together.<br/>In Norvrandt, she has nightmares whenever she sleeps. </p>
</li>
<li>
<strong>Prompt #14: Part</strong><br/>: a portion or division of a whole that is separate or distinct<br/>: piece, fragment, fraction, or section; constituent<br/>: an essential or integral attribute or quality<br/>: to divide (a thing) into parts<br/>: to be or become divided; break or cleave<br/>: to go or come apart; separate, as two or more things<br/><br/>5.0 spoilers. G'raha/WoL, WoL POV.<br/>References to scenes just before and after Mt. Gulg.<br/>Some prose here has been borrowed from my experimental <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25964395/chapters/63117286">heatfic AU</a> for Sam and G'raha.<br/>
<p>Despite what they had shared, she felt apart.</p>
</li>
<li>
<strong>Prompt #15: Ache</strong><br/>chapter posted, info in notes, added here soon</li>
<li>
<strong>Prompt #16: Lucubration<br/></strong>chapter posted, info in notes, added here soon</li>
<li>
<strong>Prompt #17: Fade<br/></strong>chapter posted, info in notes, added here soon<strong><br/></strong>
</li>
<li>
<strong>Prompt #18: Panglossian<br/></strong>chapter posted, info in notes, added here soon<strong><br/></strong>
</li>
<li>
<strong>Prompt #19: Where the Heart is</strong><br/>chapter posted, info in notes, added here soon</li>
<li>
<strong>Prompt #20: Free Day/Toll<br/></strong>chapter posted, info in notes, added here soon</li>
<li>
<strong>Prompt #21: Foibles<br/></strong>chapter posted, info in notes, added here soon<strong><br/></strong>
</li>
<li>
<strong>Prompt #22: Argy-bargy<br/></strong>chapter posted, info in notes, added here soon</li>
<li>
<strong>Prompt #23: Shuffle</strong><br/>chapter posted, info in notes, added here soon</li>
<li>
<strong>Prompt #24: Beam</strong><br/>chapter posted, info in notes, added here soon</li>
<li>
<strong>Prompt #25: Wish</strong><br/>chapter posted, info in notes, added here soon</li>
<li>
<strong>Prompt #26: Adynaton ("When Pigs Fly")</strong><br/>chapter posted, info in notes, added here soon</li>
<li>
<strong>Prompt #27: Free Day/Denouement</strong><br/>chapter posted, info in notes, added here soon</li>
<li>
<strong>Prompt #28: Irenic</strong><br/>chapter posted, info in notes, added here soon</li>
</ol><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><hr/><p>✧</p><hr/><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Prompt #1: Crux (G'raha Tia/WoL)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>"Love and Truth,” she muttered, watching him from the side of her eye.  “And ice and fire.  If love is ice and truth is fire—”</p><p>He elbowed her in the ribs.  “One could simply transpose them.”</p><p>She rolled her eyes and huffed again.  “Turn love to truth?”</p><p>“Or vice versa.”</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>: a puzzling or difficult problem : an unsolved question.<br/>: a main or central feature (as of an argument).</p><p>”T,” named fWoL/G’raha.  Nights in Mor Dhona during CT.  Feelings, nostalgia, mildly abstract.<br/>In case it wasn't evident, I enjoy writing gremlins with emotional constipation.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>☽ ✧ ☾</p><p> </p><p>His chuckle was warm summer sunset tasting of autumn, rich and rustling and crisp around the edges.  “Take my hand,” he laughed.  “I want to show you something.”</p><p>A smile tickled her lips but she opted, again, to pretend—to play-act that her interest was dim.  And it was an effort to lie to him; to imply she spent her precious stolen respites daydreaming of anything <em>other than him—</em>G’raha’s eyes, his <em>smile,</em> the wish of his hands thumbing and trawling every riddle of her skin.  </p><p>From the way he buffed his clawed nails to blunt tips, she wondered if he dared imagine the same; if perhaps in some quiet corner of his raucous, rambling mind, he hoped he might also have the chance, yet, to <em>cross that line.</em></p><p>She half-shuttered dark eyes and cocked a tense brow.  “Where are we going?”</p><p>His grin bent at the corner like the happy shepherd’s-crook of his tail.  His soft mouth hid mischief and pleasure.  “Do you trust me?”</p><p>It was a dare.</p><p>Rather than surrender, she wove them fingers to fingers and held his puckish stare.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>The Tangle was wild at night, full of hazards; patrols of guards from the Castrum, monsters and morbols and mercenaries alike.  “Where are you taking me, exactly?” </p><p>G’raha was smaller and faster, dragging her along behind.  “Trust me,” came the echo. </p><p>Dusk fell in phases around them, the haze of the Fogfens crowding her nose.  Though Samantha Rosalyn Floravale was hailed by her blessing of Light—<em>eikon slayer—</em>she shivered and was frightened.  She was budding, a still-nascent hero; thorns and brambles cut just barely on Baelsar and Ultima and the Ascian, Lahabrea—</p><p>The Warrior was dawning, while Eorzea expected her to shine. </p><p>G’raha gripped her hand tight.  The press of his calluses felt like a kiss.  A bark escaped her lips, the knit of their fingers a ladder stitch.  “Tell me again why I bother to listen?”</p><p>“Because I think you might <em>like </em>me,” he quipped—and it was something she said, some days prior.  He tossed back bright red hair to grin up into her face, and his warmth prickled through her, hot like high noon.</p><p>She stared down, dumbfounded. </p><p>Instead of saying something milder, she scoffed and scowled.  “Insufferable.”</p><p>His mirth was spicy, heady as liquor—his purr far more potent.  “My pleasure.”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>“Rathefrost,” he said, yanking her down by the hand.</p><p>Her long skirts were damp with mud and muck from the hike, her blood filled with wanderlust.  G’raha had a habit of accidentally making her ecstatic.  Her thighs ached and strained and something astral licked up her backbone as she squatted.  “Is that what they call it?”</p><p>Amid the dim gleam of omnipresent crystal, the thrumming of ambient aether, the witch and the knave-kit crouched at the edge of one cliff in Mor Dhona and gazed at the shell of the Agrius, the Keeper.  “As you know,” G’raha began, and the velvet curl of his voice suggested a story, “Among the Twelve, Althyk was warden of time—keeper of past and of future.”  Cool stone bit her palms as she leaned back to listen; let the sultry smoothness of Sharlayan jargon envelop her as wholly as the night that veiled the stars.  “His sister Nymeia was spinner of Fate—master of water and <em>watcher of skies</em>—” he paused until she glanced at him and chuckled, “—and she, along with Brother Time, saw the Falls for their ultimate nature—”</p><p>“A font of unspeakable power,” she whispered, tracing constellations.  Her stare flicked back to meet his.</p><p>The bluffs and crags of crystal all around them reflected in his eyes.  “Aether,” he agreed.  “The center of all that was, and all that ever would be.”  His words were filled with weight and whimsy.  “The Falls desired a keeper, and Time and Fate conspired—begged the king of wyrmkings to play custodian, to guard them.”</p><p>She let her gaze linger on his features; traced, too-long, the lush curve of his mouth.  “Althyk was the father of Azeyma,” she said quietly.  “Goddess of Truth and of Fire.”</p><p>“And Menphina.”  A grin crept forth and she looked away before he could gesture with his brows.</p><p>“Honestly, Raha.”  She huffed a sigh through her nose; ignored the way her cheeks prickled.  “If you end the story with some <em>bawdy joke—”</em></p><p>“I did nothing of the sort,” he insisted, scooting closer to her on the ledge.  His body heat was radiant.  “Merely connected Love and Truth in much the same vein as a bloodline.”</p><p>“Love and Truth,” she muttered, watching him from the side of her eye.  “And ice and fire.  If love is ice and truth is fire—”</p><p>He elbowed her in the ribs.  “One could simply transpose them.”</p><p>She rolled her eyes and huffed again.  “Turn love to truth?”</p><p>“Or vice versa.”</p><p>She dared another glance at him and found his eyes glittering, teal and scarlet, late daybreak, early twilight.  Afraid of the way her heart stuttered to devour, she sighed.  “Ridiculous.”</p><p>The corners of his lips twisted into a grin.  “Or brilliant.”</p><p>She pouted.  “Ridiculously brilliant,” she grumbled, completely in earnest.</p><p>A bright laugh bubbled from his throat and his tail thumped the ground.  “Glad you trusted me?”</p><p>The bones of Midgardsormr rose from the Lake, a ghost of eras long departed. </p><p>“I’m always glad to trust you, Raha,” she said, ice and fire in her chest.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>When the fire of midsummer faded, ice misting over the horizon, a single leaf turned a shade bright and brash as his hair.  Perhaps they both knew it was ending.  Something changed, much the same.  In hindsight, far more than the season—the flourishing harvest before the decay.</p><p><em>Transposition</em>.</p><p>Paths of life combine for brief seasons of change, some with the wicks to blend into twin flames.  Still more remain sparks never coaxed to kindle ablaze.  They were wrought of the same holy matter that summer—two soul-flecks of stardust chipped from primordial night.  Drawn together for the matching shards and facets in their hearts—</p><p>Unfair, <em>unfair, </em>to be <em>thrust apart—</em></p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>His knuckles stroked her backbone.</p><p>She woke to the cool of her own naked skin; stiffened at the instinct to escape his scalding touch.  She was an ember, and he, tempted into ignition; raw, dazzling impulse incarnate.</p><p>Was the truth—the <em>love—</em>not better left unsaid?</p><p>Dare she look beyond the hourglass that loomed above the bed?</p><p> </p><p>☽ ☄ ☾</p>
<hr/><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Prompt #2: Sway (Multiple Relationships)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Heavenly bodies that held her in their influence.</p><p>“Let me help you.”</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>: sovereign power, dominion<br/>: to exert a guiding or controlling influence on<br/>: the ability to exercise influence or authority<br/>: to fluctuate or veer between one point, position, or opinion and another</p><p>Stealth edited because it became too emotionally significant.<br/>Forgive me if this is awkwardly cobbled together.</p><p>Rating changes to E.  Several snippets from pre-1.0 Calamity to pre-patch 5.3. </p><p>Warning up front for consensual OC/OC relationship (Raphael &amp; Samantha) with [in other depictions, unhealthy] BDSM overtones.  Further warnings include rough sex, mention of Zenos (scars and injury), and Estinien &amp; Samantha being actual animals.  Other than that, it's all fluff and feelings.  Many POV shifts, mostly wide third-person POV with eyes belonging to: Raphael, Minfilia, G'raha, Estinien, Aymeric, and Samantha (WoL).</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>✧ ☄ ☽</p><p> </p><p>Rain pit-pattered the window.</p><p>She swallowed the breath of fragrant mist rising from her teacup—took a scalding, half-steeped sip.  Past the glass, out in the garden, the rosebushes hung their pretty red faces, the downpour making the blossoms gleaming and leaden.</p><p>A hum from his desk—that soft, commanding timbre—and she looked up as though summoned or beckoned.</p><p>Bewitched, bedazzled, besotted. </p><p>He was thumbing through papers, grim-faced, unsmiling. </p><p>“Come,” he murmured.  He sounded tired.  The word fell from thinned lips like a drop of cool water from storm-laden petals.  She rose from the armchair; padded, barefoot, past polished wood floors.  Her long nightgown whispered behind her, a white, frothy slip of a thing—a gift from him.</p><p>He stirred at the sound of her subservience.</p><p>When Raphael Lemaitre lifted his eyes, Rosalyn Floravale was lost in them.  They were green and golden and haunted with hazel, arcane and enchanting as the aurum of his hair.  He wet his lips and tipped his quill in its stand; pushed his chair from the counter to allow her to perch in his lap.  “Sit.”</p><p>Her heart stuttered with butterfly flutters as she climbed astride.  He allowed her one rare moment of abandon, to stroke her hands through his long, flaxen hair.  She pulled it loose of its ribbon.  “You look tired,” she said, timid fingertips tracing his resplendent cheekbones.  She cupped the sharp angle of his jawline; kissed the side of his mouth.  “Let me help.”</p><p>He wrapped her wrist in his hand and closed his eyes.  Raphael turned his face to press the hard slash of his mouth against the lines of her palm, the arch of his regal nose caught between her fingers.</p><p>“You always do,” he whispered.  It was quiet enough to vanish—to disappear into the grumbling of the rainfall and the wind.  Whether she heard him or not, before he could intercept it, she snatched the bridge of his glasses.  Through his defenses slipped the first flicker of a grin; she cackled as he slipped very cold, very clinical fingertips up the front of her chemise, stiff against her skin. </p><p>Thumbs stained by ink moved directly to her breasts, his feather-light touch nonetheless <em>kindling.</em>  She arched to fill his hands; to beg him, silently, to cast aside pretense.  But Raphael Lemaitre was stern as a statue and nothing could sway him.  As always, he looked up through bronze lashes, knowledge implacable, a stronghold unspeaking, unsmiling, unyielding. </p><p>After long hours lecturing students, he preferred quiet.</p><p>She writhed, impatient, in his lap.  He watched a moment in silence.  Hands primed for reading and writing moved, very slowly, down the outline of her body—found her hips and eased into a calculated shift.  Their bodies moved together, and an ugly cry tore from her lips.</p><p>“Shh,” he hushed, unlatching his belt.</p><p>She held her lip between her teeth to stifle all sound as she watched him.  Unbuckled, unbuttoned, he pushed the immaculate press of his trousers down just low enough to—</p><p>Her hot, greedy fingers snatched his length into her fist.  Always so hungry to take him, she hitched herself up, and he hissed to see she was bare beneath the nightdress—completely unhindered.</p><p>They were practiced.  So rehearsed, now, she knew the best fits of their bodies; made the frantic struggle of sex into something graceful and efficient.  Her desperation always left him breathless, and in the midst of that rainstorm, his dignified lips fell soundlessly open as she sank to sheathe him inside in one stroke, riding him, unruly and reckless.</p><p>Had her eyes been open in the blinding breath that he filled her—had they been open, not closed for the <em>thrill</em>—she would have seen incomprehensible adoration in his face; the brief, broken instant his chiseled façade collapsed.  But the mask of power clicked back just as quickly—the need to <em>restrain her,</em> <em>outlast her</em>, and <em>conquer.</em></p><p>She clapped her own palm over her own mouth to stifle her ragged cries and he kissed the valleys of her knuckles; let his eyes glitter like sunbeams in springtime.</p><p>
  <em>Good girl.</em>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p>✧ ☄ ✧<br/>
<br/>
</p><p> </p><p>The Antecedent’s laugh caught, half-through her throat, and she stifled it. </p><p>“What?”  Thancred’s scoff was both merry and biting.  He stumbled to a halt, dragging the flabbergasted Hero beside him.</p><p>“The two of you look so—” Warde cut herself off.  “Forgive me—” Her sky-pale eyes glittered, filled with bald amusement.  The Warrior—<em>Samantha</em>—pushed her dark hair back with both hands, a fiery blush on her swarthy, sun-blemished cheeks.</p><p>“Are you <em>laughing at us?”</em></p><p>A giggle escaped the Antecedent’s lips.  She coughed back the cascade that threatened; pinned Waters with a gentle stare.  “My dear Thancred—stand aside, if you please?”</p><p>Both of her sentinel's ash-blond eyebrows rose and he lifted both hands, play-acting a couerl-burglar at knifepoint.  “Fair lady,” he drawled, reversing three paces.</p><p>Samantha watched in some blend of horror and unabashed fascination as Minfilia swept into the center of the room, reaching for her with unassuming, outstretched hands.  “Allow me,” she offered, keeping her voice soft and tranquil, hoping it offered some solace.  “Our friend here of course is an unrivaled tutor, but—” and she prayed her eyes, then, were soothing.  Floravale was full of fire, but skittish, so much promise, so much <em>wild</em>.  “Ascilia remembers the basics far better.”</p><p>From her guardian, she felt the heat of his exasperated affection—stern and probing <em>cross-examination</em>—and passed him a heartening glance. </p><p><em>S</em><em>tay.</em> </p><p>Samantha crept forward, still possessed of that caged-animal stare.  “Ascilia?”</p><p>“My name,” she said, very quiet.  A tiny smile curled her lips.  “The true one.”</p><p>“But,” came the instantaneous mutter from the watcher, “If you so much as breathe an <em>onze</em> beyond this chamber—”</p><p>His interruption was disrupted.  “I trust her,” said Minfilia, holding the Warrior in her eyes.  Samantha had a fierce and determined appearance—a <em>woman,</em> to be certain—but despite over two epochs of namedays, the sorceress yet moved with self-doubt; exuded a girlish and muted lack of confidence that Ascilia, for all her abundant misfortunes, <em>comprehended very well.</em></p><p>“That would be the Blessing,” offered Thancred, benevolently unhelpful. </p><p>“No.”  Warde beheld Floravale with tender evaluation.  They stood close, now; close enough to twine hands.  “Somehow,” she wove fingertips together; locked eyes, light to dark, “I would trust her regardless.”  Minfilia’s voice came out small and wondering, like a child. </p><p>Samantha responded in kind.  “You <em>would?”</em></p><p>Thancred cocked a resigned hip against the well-worn desk and sighed; watched as two would-be schoolgirls burdened by the weight of the known world swung into silent metronome rhythm, the Antecedent’s surefooted actions rendered clumsy by the Warrior’s ineptness.</p><p>Ascilia had been told, from the first of her years—admittedly mostly by Thancred, Twelve bless him—that the shine of her grin held the warmth to melt winters; that, perhaps, if she met all of Coerthas with her gladness, she could thaw even Dalamud’s harshest aetherical chill.</p><p>She aimed her finest smile at Samantha.</p><p>“I would trust you in twelve thousand lifetimes.”  She used her chin to point to their toes, and Samantha tripped across the floor to follow.  “Excepting yon loitering observer,” another admittedly unnecessary glance to reassure him, “Rarely have I met a soul I found—so suddenly <em>familiar.”</em></p><p>Samantha’s complexion was olive, dark-freckled, but not deep enough to obscure the hot red of her blush.  “I feel the same,” she babbled.  “Familiar, I mean—as though I knew you long before we ever met.”</p><p>Warde spun the two of them to trace the empty Solar.  “Marvelous,” she said gently, and Thancred’s eyes followed them both, serene and tempered.  “We might make a proper friend of you yet.”</p><p>Minfilia pretended not to notice how her partner’s breath stoppered—looked away as Samantha cast a nervous glance to Waters.  Warde was aware of the role he assumed on her arrival in Ul’dah; camouflaged the elation she felt at his aura of pride and <em>protection.  So you adopted her as well, my secret-keeper.</em></p><p>"Scion and associate,” he grunted, feigning indifference—though the look in his eyes was anything but.</p><p>The Warrior huffed.  “I would love nothing more than your friendship,” she muttered, and the words were rough but honest.  She was catching on to one bar of the dance—Tataru would be delighted.  “But—” She laughed then, nervous.  “How can I presume to join in?” </p><p>Her dark, delving stare flicked to Minfilia’s—smoldering and <em>shy.</em></p><p>“Why,” and the Antecedent lifted both arms to guide her in a pirouette.  “You join in the same as this.”  The Warrior twirled and her uneven skirts whirled in tiers to hug her calves, catching on the buckles of her blonde spinner’s boots, tickling the trims of leather-embellished leggings.</p><p>Rosalyn and Ascilia met each other eye-to-eye, the hybrid mage no small margin taller—</p><p>And then the woman the Antecedent hoped might fill the old soles of an Archon tripped all over herself and they were entangled, slip to surcote.  With an exaggerated sigh, Thancred bustled over to unravel them.  “So much for hoodwinking the Syndicate.” </p><p>Above their sudden, wild laughter, Samantha barked.  “I trained in natural magick, not <em>parlor tricks.”</em></p><p>Minfilia was breathless.  “I’ve been cured of misgivings.”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p>☽ ✧ ☾</p><p> </p><p>His tail swayed back and forth as he looked at the Tower.</p><p>There in the distant yawn of that crystalline throne room, the Void yet stretched—and there <em>beyond,</em> through that rift in time and space and <em>aether,</em> Nero—</p><p>G’raha Tia balled his hands into fists and squared his center of gravity; felt the heft of eons past and future ghost to settle on his shoulders.  There was something, <em>something—something he was missing.</em></p><p>Something he <em>yet needed to finish.</em></p><p>Like Nero, he hungered for Allag.  For all G’raha knew that his colleagues might deride him—the lash of Scaevan sarcasm was, after all, something far harsher than <em>biting—</em>he almost, quite often, <em>related </em>to the defector; met cold eyes the color of midwinter mornings and saw something brittle tucked behind them.</p><p>Brittle, and bitter—substratum primed to crack.</p><p>“Raha?”</p><p>The barest sound of her voice pooled to tug at his navel.  He turned before she could see the way the dense hairs along his tailbone stood up; loosed a casual grin like a mockery of an arrow.  “You found me.”</p><p>“Of course I—” In the darkness, she almost looked <em>frightened.</em>  The plucking sensation dropped inconveniently lower as she trudged up to glare down at his face, a worry line creased between her brows.  “You—” She pursed her lips and spluttered.  “After all that happened—” She flicked one frustrated hand toward the looming, glittering spire.  “Tell me before you run off like that.”</p><p>Oh, she was <em>furious—</em>furious and <em>terrified.</em></p><p>
  <em>For him.</em>
</p><p>Pleasure stirred in his heart and down between his legs before he could ignore it.  He raised his eyebrows.  “Worrying after me?”</p><p>She scowled harder.  “You—” Her hands were balled into fists so tight he could see every ridge of her knuckles and half-gloves.  “Of course I <em>worry after you, Raha.”</em></p><p>A tremor itched down his back and he ignored the sudden, feral urge he felt to <em>pounce.</em>  “As you see,” he said instead, gesturing to himself.  “Whole and hale.”</p><p>“Uncharacteristic,” she muttered.  She thrust out one hand, flexing stiff fingers.</p><p>He had the choice, then, to continue to rile her—but he wove them palm to palm instead, following back to the outpost.  A thrill marched up his spine as she all but dragged him to camp, his deepest, most animal instincts ecstatic to be chased and <em>claimed.</em></p><p>He supposed he should have known, somehow, that things would shift—change being the crux of existence, the eternal pendulum swing.  But had he known, even after; even granted the gift of both foresight and hindsight, would he have picked another way?</p><p>When he thought of it centuries after, he remembered a mirage.  For what else could it be but delirium imagined, delusions he dreamt in the lifetimes he slept in the Umbilicus, the haze of his waking besides?</p><p>But wherever it came from, in no past, present, or future would G’raha rob himself of one memory:  Her legs, a cage to bind him as he moved, slowly and carefully, inside.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p>☾ ❅ ☽</p><p> </p><p>His growl was furious.  “Let me help you.”</p><p>She squirmed away from him like an eel but Estinien chased her; pinned her down with the obstinate weight of his body.  He was scalding hot, the gift he stole from Nidhogg affecting his temperature.</p><p>“Let <em>go of me,” </em>she growled, trying to kick him, but he curled in a way that placed his long frame at the advantage.  His right hand was encrusted with scales of obsidian, vaguely monstrous, and where he touched her a tickling miasma of aether descended.  Warped crimson and violet levin tangled down her body in gossamer cobwebs, and each felt the other flicker within—that strange place they were blended from sharing the Eyes, however swiftly her tenure had ended.</p><p><em>“Let me look at you,” </em>he snarled, and just as the smoke of his eldritch magick found a crack in the light of her blessings, seeping in, he snatched her wrist in his hand and used the secret she taught him against her.</p><p>A cry tore from her throat—<em>arse—</em>and she crumpled, limp, to the blankets. </p><p>Then, with the skilled and ruthless fingers of a hunter, he stripped her bare of skirts and bodice and shucked her free of her chemise, much like cleaning an antelope carcass.</p><p>It was rare that Estinien was stunned, but his eyes went wide on reflex at the sight of the wounds on her body—fresh tracks and puckered scars, no few left by <em>Ame-no-Habakiri</em>.  His scale-flecked thumb stroked a path by the lines left by the katana and he shuddered with a convulsion, consumed at once by rage.  Again, both could feel it curl <em>within, </em>an actual, aetherical connection.</p><p><em>Death,</em> came the inward rumble, not from her, but from Estinien.</p><p>
  <em>I will kill him.</em>
</p><p>She coughed out a laugh.  “Who can kill the unkillable,” she croaked, increasingly convinced that the prince was akin to a demon.  “That man defies all rational definition.”</p><p>“Slag him,” Estinien spat, physically trembling.  His eyes were frozen on the places stained by Doma, by Galvus—her flawed and magnificent skin— “How could you <em>let him—"</em></p><p>“I let <em>nothing,”</em> she hissed, the command of her magick returning.  She huffed a breath to transpose the fire building in her chest and it came out an icy mist.  “How could <em>you allow Nidhogg?”</em></p><p>Hard, dark eyes caught her glare.  They were locked for a handful of hot breaths and heartbeats.  Estinien lunged, pulling the blow just before their browbones cracked together; nestling gently instead. </p><p>His voice rarely hitched, rarely fractured.  “He told me to protect you,” he whispered, and in the depths of it she heard something shatter; a glacier’s melting edge.</p><p>
  <em>Aymeric.</em>
</p><p>“You are,” she rasped, both hands on his face.  “You do.  You did.”</p><p>Thought evaporated.  Tussle turned to whispers turned to snapping and half-bitten kisses.  His clothes were gone, saltwater on his face.  The source of the tears hardly mattered.</p><p>Samantha hooked her knee around his haunches, tossed her head back, and howled. </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p>☾ ✧ ☽</p><p> </p><p>The canopy of the Twelveswood swayed above. </p><p>He laughed, and a cackle of crowcall escaped her.  “And here I thought,” she rasped, hoarse, “The Lord Commander was not the type to be <em>prevailed upon.”</em></p><p>A crooked grin twisted his lips.  He hooked his elbow to buttress her back; dipped her low so that the gleaming, star-white fringes of her blanched hair swept almost to the ground.  “But you, my Hero,” he exhaled, “Are <em>prevailing.”  </em>He whorled her upright and was gratified to find her grinning, broad and breathless.  “And I of course admit a certain bias in the case of our <em>affairs.”</em></p><p>She unfurled against his arm and tossed her head; barked another wine-drunk chortle at the stars that glittered far above the boughs.  The lamplight cast the stern angles of her face into shadows impossibly softer, framed by the intermittent pinprick-incandescence of fireflies.</p><p>Like them, her splendor shone foremost from within.</p><p>“Impolitic,” she teased him, “For a statesman to play favorites.”  And then, without warning, she was deadweight in his hands.  The Warrior of Light dragged the Speaker of Ishgard down to dewy cushions of moss and leaf-litter; jerked her chin toward the bottle long abandoned.  “And to ply a weary Scion with <em>drink,</em> nonetheless.”  She quirked a brow.  “Are you trying to intoxicate me, Ser Aymeric?”</p><p>He was smiling down at her, beguiled—<em>hers, helplessly, always</em>.  “Not on drink,” he murmured, brushing the tips of their noses together.  “Though I concede I misjudged the—<em>vigor</em> of this vintage.”</p><p>She snorted and dissolved into guffaws, and he held her, amused and admiring.</p><p>His design was elaborate—ambitious and, to his horror, slightly <em>extravagant</em>—from aperitifs with her parents, to the banquet in the ballroom, to this tour of girlhood haunts and havens, he had <em>plans.</em></p><p><em>But let her this moment,</em> his skipping heart warbled.  <em>This breath of freedom from Norvrandt.</em> </p><p>
  <em>Your grandiose suggestions can wait.</em>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p>☾ ☄ ✧</p><p> </p><p>He held his frame at an angle away from her.</p><p>
  <em>Distant.</em>
</p><p>“Close the door,” she begged again.  The Exarch met her stare through copper lashes, the side of shrewd, slitted eyes, and the Tower itself seemed to inhale.  There was a long, gravid pause.</p><p>Then, very sudden, very quiet, the access to the Ocular clicked shut.</p><p>And they were alone.</p><p>The Exarch—<em>G’raha</em>—gripped his right arm like it pained him.  She reached for it on impulse.  “Let me help you.”</p><p>It should have been easier, to look and see a friend.  But it was hard to reconcile, to dissect him from her trials—to blend the ardent young scholar with the cryptic old man.  Even as he turned and opened his posture to her; even as she took him by the shoulder, the shape so familiar—he was something <em>slightly else</em>.  The richness of his very timbre was darkened, subtly altered, the Exarch ancient in ways that G’raha Tia only wished to understand.  “Samantha—”</p><p>“No.”  Her low voice echoed hoarsely in the room.  “Don’t dispute it.  Don’t speak to me of debts or death or some other damnation imagined.”  His right shoulder was hard as granite.  She dug in her fingertips.  “You don’t deserve to suffer, Raha,” she muttered.  “You never did.”</p><p>His face was serene and impassive.  But as she watched—as she poured healing aether through his fractures, letting it slip between the tectonics of him and the Tower—something cracked.</p><p>Strong arms hooked the small of her back, his stature humble but packed, dense and deceptive, with power.  He crumpled with a breath and turned to crush his face against her shoulder.</p><p>“Say it again.”</p><p>Shocked from focus, her spell fizzled—but her grip on him cinched.  She hugged him, hard.  “You never deserved it,” she rasped, one hand cradling his neck.  “Not one bit.”</p><p>The hard tips of crystallized fingers caught between the layers of her bodice.  The breath he took rattled his body.</p><p>How long they stood and swayed there was unknown.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>The spell to shield her aether was proving easier to weave, but whether it was effective was a question only Estinien could answer.</p><p>It was late by the time she reached the Manor.  Snow fell in flurries, all but stopped, and she took her time shedding her layers, sneaking into the foyer so as not to wake the—</p><p>A breathy laugh, far down the hallway.</p><p>She froze and craned her neck.  A dim glow from the direction of the parlor.  Sweeping back her hair, now damp with melted snowflakes, she tiptoed down the vaulted corridor, ears peeled for—</p><p>
  <em>“Fury bless it.”</em>
</p><p>Aymeric’s laugh, again.  “You keep too much tension in your shoulders.”</p><p>A grin curled her lips in a reflex like breathing and she picked up her pace, keeping quiet.  The heirlooms and artifacts stored on the walls seemed to watch and adjudicate as she crept to the archway, peeking in.</p><p>There in the parlor, limned by firelight, the two most eminent figures of her Ishgard were <em>dancing.</em></p><p>Estinien swayed away from his partner, long torso bared to the hips, garbed in ash-colored slacks that hugged his thighs too tightly—a pair nicked from Aymeric, no doubt.  And the lender himself was dressed all in black, the high neck of his collar offering only the barest glimpse of alabaster throat.</p><p>Quiet and clandestine, she leaned against the frame, watching as the two of them simpered.</p><p>“Poor form,” crooned the lord of the house.</p><p>“My arse,” came the clapback. </p><p>With lupine grace, Estinien slunk back, snatching Aymeric’s wrist.  A wicked smirk curved Borel’s beautiful mouth as he followed.  “That, I assure you, is formed quite correctly.”</p><p>And then Estinien laughed.  It was a raw, candid sound—wide and rambling as the grin on his lips.  At the gleam of his teeth, a wild, uninhibited rapture surged through her, and she realized with a start—</p><p>It did not belong only to her.</p><p>Before she could think to escape, a hard, towering body barreled for impact.  “You little <em>rat,”</em> Estinien growled—and she caught a glittering wink in his right earlobe as she was lifted from the floor, hefted easily over his shoulder.</p><p>She slumped and twisted to find Aymeric watching, smiling bright.  “Ignore me,” she insisted.  “Keep bonding.  I have a mind to go to the—”</p><p>But Estinien was already carrying her up the stairs.  “You smell like—” She could <em>hear </em>his nose wrinkle.  “Too much of those damned Lakeland lilacs and not enough like <em>me.”</em></p><p>She huffed.  “Last I checked, the world was not, in fact, <em>compelled to smell Wyrmbloodian.”</em></p><p>Trailing behind by several paces, Aymeric followed, laughter lighting the ice of his stare.  He pushed the rook-black curl from his eyes and fixed her with earnest attention.  “Welcome home again, beloved.”</p><p>Home, again, to stay.</p><p> </p><p>☾ ☄ ✧</p>
<hr/><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Prompt #3: Muster (Thancred, Minfilia, WoL)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Closeness.  He never allowed it.  Not for himself.</p><p>But he would permit himself to relish from a distance.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>: to call forth<br/>: an act of assembling<br/>: critical examination<br/>: a representative specimen</p><p>Rated "G."  Thancred POV.  WoL &amp; Minfilia, early ARR.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>✧</p><p> </p><p>Thancred Waters was proficient at snooping.</p><p>It was a cultivated talent, to know how to <em>spy—</em>and as a consequence of prying, he was doomed with many secrets; riddles and enigmas he was cursed, thenceforth, to keep.  It was an omnipresent peril of his chosen occupation; the bane of the scoundrel, to be clandestine and creeping.</p><p>The salt of Vesper Bay crowded his nostrils as he sought her—the Warrior of Light, Rosalyn—<em>call me Samantha—</em>and found not one, but two solemn bearers of the Blessing.  The smaller Antecedent draped her arm in a loose cling around the taller, guiding her out into the square.</p><p>Waters froze at once and backed into the shadows. </p><p>From the way his gut curled and twisted on instinct, he knew he should leave.</p><p>Instead, brows down, guilty feet silent, a bizarrely boyish flutter stirred beneath his breastbone and he melted into the scenery, watching the pair with curious, questioning eyes.</p><p>Samantha was a stern and scowling person—there was a story behind it, her grimness; it came across like a disguise—but for Warde, she warmed and thawed.  “What about here?”  She gestured to a ledge.</p><p>“A wonderful suggestion.” </p><p>The girls perched together on cracked sandstone, encircled by flowering bromeliads, beneath the reaching foliage of a palm.  Between them was a basket.  The graven image of Nanarito passed judgment as Warde began to unpack—fruits and finger foods and folded handkerchiefs, a volume tuned for two—one stolen splinter of serenity condensed into a picnic.  Minfilia handed a napkin to Samantha, and the lips of the sorceress quirked into an unpracticed grin. </p><p>Her dark stare unnervingly softened, a blush on her skin—</p><p>Thancred realized something.</p><p>
  <em>She loves her.</em>
</p><p>He knew it was true.  Even watching from a distance, his stomach brimmed with butterflies and flipped.  It reminded him of pining; of young and wondering fondness, feelings quite distinct from his personal sentiments.</p><p>The bystander made sure he was shrouded—noted that nothing gave him more contentment than Warde’s sheer, unalloyed bliss.  Here, he was able to see it.  Minfilia was <em>laughing,</em> the pure distilled force of her affection focused on the harsh-looking girl peeling an orange—smiling through the juice and pulp of a wedge and allowing, just for a heartbeat, the dour mask to crack.</p><p>Thancred felt protective; hungry to grant them this easy, earthly instant.</p><p>Closeness.  He never allowed it.  Not for himself.</p><p>But he would permit himself to relish from a distance.  Permit that, above the bitters of his self-imposed denials, he felt indulgent to simply bear witness—felt joy and jubilation, that they enjoyed what he would not.  Love, for the girl he adored in every conceivable fashion, and the woman he dared to believe a young legend.</p><p>Minfilia turned her face to Samantha like a blossom in the sun; the golden-haired Warde and wild, rambling Warrior.</p><p>Roses yet bloomed in the desert.</p><p> </p><p>✧</p>
<hr/><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>:)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Prompt #4: Clinch (G'raha Tia/WoL, WoL/Aymeric)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>“Perfect,” G’raha breathed.  He whirled to face Samantha.  “Dance with me.”</p><p>It was not a request.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>: embrace<br/>: to hold fast or firmly<br/>: to make final or irrefutable</p><p>"T," maybe gently "M."  G'raha/WoL reminiscence and brief WoL/Aymeric.  WoL POV.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>✧ ☄ ☽</p><p> </p><p>She stopped counting time by autumns after the Tower.</p><p>To worsen the bite—to make that evanescent season impossible to forget—Samantha was born near that border, her name day cast just before that liminal gasp.  She was a late summer blossom that craved for cool air, and it pained her, after G’raha, to remember.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>The front end of dusk was beginning, the spire on the horizon aglow.</p><p>Another day, ordinary but for the circumstances.  But that, she supposed, was the fodder for stories—mundane moments, supernormal per perspective.  One hand crept to her chest and took her aethermist necklace in hand; toyed with the crystal and wondered—were the Scions at the Stones, sharing tea and fables and banalities their own?  In her weeks spent afield mapping pathways, maiming monsters, scaling the echelons of the Tower—had her absence been felt? </p><p>Minfilia’s smile was warmer than sunshine and Samantha let herself bask for the briefest of breaths; felt the cool press of gemstone in her hand.  “For your protection,” the Antecedent told her, and the Warrior turned the mother-shard gift between her fingers—watched it sparkle and shimmer.</p><p>Now it was warmed; imbued with heat from her skin, through her layers of chemise, blouse, and bodice.  She thumbed the crystal and thought of Warde, of Waters—Tataru Taru serving tea—Papalymo preaching to Yda, Y’shtola scoffing fondly—Urianger pontificating while the Leveilleur twins attended—</p><p>A body a head-and-some smaller slammed into her back, strong arms grappling her into a bear hug. </p><p>“You sly old thing!”</p><p>The wind was knocked from her lungs, her imaginings scattered, as G’raha Tia all but wrestled her up off the ground.  Senseless afresh at the show of his strength, she coughed.  “Gods and hells.”  It was difficult to remember the last time someone, in no uncertain terms, <em>swept her off her feet.</em>  “What in the—<em>Raha</em>—put me <em>down—”</em></p><p>“Why did you not <em>tell me?”</em></p><p>He was audibly pouting. </p><p>She used the callused heels of both palms to wrestle the cinching clinch of his forearms, but his vise grip was unbending.  She glared at his freckled, sunburnt skin, her voice strained.  “Tell you <em>what?”</em></p><p>“That today was your name day,” he sulked, rattling her body minutely.  “I would have foraged for gifts.”</p><p>She huffed hard.  Her cheeks prickled.  Leave it to G’raha to winkle out her secrets.</p><p><em>But who told him?</em> </p><p>…</p><p>She would kill Cid bloody Garlond. </p><p>Her body collapsed into deadweight.  As usual, in defense against her sentiments—to tamp down the way her heart raced and fluttered, simply to know G’raha <em>cared—</em></p><p>She reached for insipid banter.  “Why did you not tell me you were <em>so godsdamned brawny?”</em></p><p>“Aha,” he laughed.  “You mean to imply you never noticed?”</p><p>There was a wink in his voice.  She coughed, indignant—because <em>of course she had, </em>but— “Your ego would never survive how much I’ve noticed,” she wheezed, surprised by her own frankness.  She could veritably feel the heat of his massive grin as he eased her back to earth. </p><p>His voice was a rumble, thrilled and satisfied.  “Fabulous.”  One last squeeze like a cincher at her waist, and then she was released.  “Remind me to show you my trump cards more often.”</p><p>“Numpty,” she grumbled, pushing away. </p><p>She spun to scowl down and G’raha’s smile was wide as imagined, dry Mor Dhonan dust stirred up by the delighted lash of his tail.  The tip curled and hooked like the side of his mouth.  “Right,” he said, all candor and merriment and crisp bits of mischief.  “How shall we celebrate?”</p><p>She spluttered.  “I had no intention to—”</p><p>But his hand was shoved in hers and she was being dragged—a fond, familiar hauling she was furtively glad to call common.  “Revenant’s Toll,” he said, hitched with excitement.  “Our research can wait—”</p><p>“But Xande—”</p><p>“Is trapped,” said G’raha.  “And I, for one, will not allow the horrors of Allag to interfere with your <em>birthday.”</em></p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Supper hung warm in her belly as they scaled the path to the greenery just past the Splendors.</p><p>The omnipresent chatter of settlers and workers faded into static as G’raha’s hand crept again to find hers.  “This way,” he murmured, his palm pulsing her fingers with a gentle, affectionate wring.</p><p>Heaviness shunted her chest.  For a breath, she feared she might burst open—might collapse and dissolve into hot surging butterflies, like those that crowded her stomach.</p><p>They moved beyond the dull commotion, and music distantly warbled, the melody stronger and stronger.  G’raha’s ears flicked, overfocused in her vision, and when he turned to flash a grin, she felt sunshine again.  “A troubadour,” he laughed—summer sunset, rich and rustling—and as they rounded the corner, she saw the minstrel in question, perched and playing her lyre on a half-mortared ledge.</p><p>The small square was under construction but G’raha Tia hardly cared.  He towed her right up to the bard and threw down a handful of gil.  The Warrior of Light watched in awe as the Baldesion Scholar listed songs by titles unfamiliar, stopping only when the bemused musician grinned.</p><p>“That one,” she said, flexing her hands.  “I well know it.”</p><p>“Perfect,” G’raha breathed.  He whirled to face Samantha.  “Dance with me.”</p><p>It was not a request.</p><p>His hands snatched her wrists, then her fingers, and they were woven callus to callus.  He brought his strength to bear again as she gasped his name—<em>Raha—</em>and they were spinning.</p><p>An ugly laugh tore from her throat, and she was dizzy—anchored by the bright sight of his smile.  Her bearings were lost, her wits scattered.  She watched the movement of his soft and beautiful mouth, and it took her too many heartbeats to realize he was <em>singing.</em></p><p>The curl of his timbre plucked something far inside her.  Ilsabardian, she realized.  He was singing in that language—</p><p>
  <em>Like Cassius—</em>
</p><p>Tears pricked her eyes.</p><p>“Your voice.”  Hers was hoarse and husky.  “It’s magnificent.”</p><p>The pitch on his lips spiraled off into a rich vibrato.  “Another card to your liking, then?”</p><p>Her pulse filled her ears.  She nodded, and at the way he dazzled, incandescent, reality beyond him was gone.</p><p>G’raha Tia was a riddle, hard and charming and delightful; so bizarre he left her petrified, more frightening, somehow, than a Garlean legatus.  His smile stirred her aether, something quiet and arcane, and a swift, relentless pressure thumped like wingbeats in her chest.</p><p>
  <em>I—</em>
</p><p>He twirled her into a spin.  She bent along after; stumbled under his arms and snagged herself, boot tip to boot tip.  A shout left her lips as she fell—the clinch of his arms snared her waist as he dove to catch her—and the two of them crumpled, gasping, to the ground.</p><p>One leg sprawled beneath him.  One knee cocked against his hip.  She giggled helplessly as his body shuddered overhead, laughter rolling from his chest.  His ears were perked straight forward, his stare so warm.</p><p>“Some pair we make,” he murmured past the mirth, and he used one scuffed hand to push her tangled hair behind her ear; to stroke the pads of his fingers, very slowly, down her face.</p><p>They locked eyes.  Both went still.  With the weight of his body above her, cradled hips to cautious hips, a whisper of hunger burned inside her to realize how well they might actually <em>fit.</em></p><p>He wet his lips.  His pupils widened, then thinned back to slits. </p><p>Slowly, he disentangled them—stepped up and away and reached one hand down.  Palm to palm, she was lifted, and— “Follow me,” he said.  Again they were stitched at the fingers, her heart become the butterfly flutter, her blood alive with wild anticipation.</p><p>Notes fell from his lips—he was singing, and panting, and breathless—and she gripped his hand more tightly.  Past the square, past the last hints of construction, past the edge of the Toll and out into Mor Dhona—</p><p>They ran into fields strewn with glowing crystals, and before she could catch her air, she was against him; hugged into the hard clutch of his arms like a cincher.  He pressed his face to the edge of her shoulder, conspicuously avoiding her chest.  “Samantha.”  Her name was hot on his lips, hot on the skin past her vestments.  Her arms curled, careful around him, and her sleeves slouched half-down.  “I—” his voice cracked.  “Have another gift,” he huffed.  “That is—before I lose the courage to give it.”</p><p>Her hands crept up his neck; covetously traced the small plait at his nape.  Her body was humming, her pulse racing fast, the precipice between them disappearing in a glimmer.  She forced herself to ask.  “What is it?”</p><p>His mouth at the fringe of her sleeve and her skin.  “A kiss.”</p><p>Her heart was a stone plunging into her stomach.  She froze—leaned back—found his mismatched eyes tilted up to her in gallantry and terror.</p><p>
  <em>Yes, yes, yes—</em>
</p><p>Her throat was dry, and silence overlingered.  He went tense.  She felt him begin to recoil and stopped him, her thumbs by his lips.  When she leaned down, her dark hair curtained around them. </p><p>“Kiss me, then,” she whispered.</p><p>Shadowed eyes roved her face.  His hands stroked a path up her backbone.  He tipped up his chin, and his mouth was soft and lush, his taste warm and bitter.  He tried to leave her with a peck but she followed him for something good and proper, drinking the breath from the tip of his tongue, tasting hope and apprehension.</p><p>Their noses brushed together.  “Happy name day, Samantha.”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>After that, winters seemed a better measure.</p><p>Winter was, after all, where she found summer again.</p><p>His laugh was warm and breathy.  “I was born then, you know,” Borel hummed, voice like velvet and honey and richer than silk.  “On that crisp cusp between greenings and heat.”</p><p>“Soft thing of springtime,” she called him.</p><p>“Monster of maying,” he whispered.</p><p>“Either way,” she kissed his lips.  “You brought me sunshine again.”</p><p> </p><p>☽ ✧ ☾</p>
<hr/><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>A huge thanks to my dear Nightmist for allowing me to muse and riff upon her headcanon of summer-baby Aymeric, Frostmantle for enabling my CT &amp; closeted Ironworks obsession and indulging Ilsabard discussions, and the lovely members of the Book Club for their unwavering assistance.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Prompt #5: Matter of Fact (G'raha Tia/WoL)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>A tight and wondering silence rose between them then, hope and fear and friction.  They circled each other the whole of the season, attracted by gravity, afraid to be overwhelmed.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>: adhering to the unembellished facts<br/>: being plain, straightforward, or unemotional</p><p>CT flashback continues from chapter prior.<br/>"M," sexual tension.  G'raha/WoL, G'raha POV.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>☽ ✧ ☾</p><p> </p><p>The stars glittered overhead.  “Happy name day, Samantha.”</p><p>Their noses brushed together, skin to flush-warmed skin, and over the rush of his own erratic heartbeat—over the thrill that <em>she had kissed him—</em>one refrain.  <em>Not like this, not like this, not like—</em></p><p>She was smiling.  Her dark eyes glinted with tears.  A puff of breath warmed his still-tingling lips.  “Thank you, Raha.”  Her voice was gentle.  She used his name with candor, unsullied and pristine, and her gratitude pulled at his heartstrings—made him crave hungry, unthinkable things.</p><p>It took every ilm of self-control to lean away; to wind them, instead, hand-in-hand.  They began the trek back to the Silvertear outpost, separation between them.  Space, when he wanted to wink it from existence.  Distance in lieu of indulgence, knit limb to limb on the bank.  He wanted to pry loose her bodice and ruck up her skirts; shuck down his trousers and <em>take her</em>—lay his claim there in the bare Mor Dhonan wilds, the glow of looming crystal their sole illumination.</p><p>Instead, he exercised restraint.</p><p>“Was that the last of your surprises?”  There was a hitch in her voice, low and husky.  A surge of warmth swelled down, hot and heavy, and he realized how long he’d been silent. </p><p>“Perhaps.”  Blood rushed up his neck.  The ache between his legs twitched to attention, and he prayed the night would hide it.  “But this is your day, Samantha—”</p><p><em>Regardless of whatever I desire.</em> </p><p>He cleared his throat and willed his blood to calm down.  “The remainder is yours to command.”</p><p>He looked up to find her eyes trained on the horizon.  When she spoke, her voice was tiny.  “So little feels mine.”  She cast a sudden glance to him and smiled; squeezed his hand.  “But thank you again.”</p><p>“My pleasure,” he said.  But no time to bask.  No time to thrill when much more could be planned.  His gifts were too meager, too paltry, too bland.  Would that what he offered was substantial; something grand—would that he could give her bliss and <em>rapture,</em> firsthand.</p><p><em>Tell her.</em> </p><p>A flicker of daring, and he wove their fingers full together; felt another surge of warmth beneath his skin.  He took a breath.  “I love to see you grin,” he said.  “Hear your laughter—the louder the better.”  A buzz of satisfaction rolled through him like thunder as the pad of her thumb traced his knuckles, their palms clutched together.  “Every glimpse you give past your defenses.”  Another shallow inhalation.  “I would do anything—anything at all—to ease the weight on your shoulders.”</p><p>Her voice was rough and on the bare edge of dread.  “You are very good at that,” she said.  “Very good at making me forget myself.”  She held fast to his hand.  “I—never realized you wanted to kiss me.”</p><p>Shock crept down his spine and he smiled on impulse; felt every ilm of his tailbone prickle.  He trained his eyes on his shuffling feet, boots digging scrapes in dry ground, the uneven drape of her dust-dirtied skirts swishing by them.  “I never realized—you might <em>let me.”</em></p><p>A tight and wondering silence rose between them then, hope and fear and friction.  They circled each other the whole of the season, attracted by gravity, afraid to be overwhelmed.</p><p>Perhaps it was the spell of joy and easy friendship he labored to give her.  Perhaps it was another ephemeral instant of valor.  “It was just as I imagined,” she said, very small, very quiet.</p><p>Racing his chest.  His pulse between his legs.  “The kiss?”</p><p>He dared to look at her.  Her eyes were aimed at her toes and her laces, her face painted dark with a blush.  “It made me wonder,” she began.  And then her voice stalled in her throat.</p><p>Up to this summer, G’raha Tia would have called his confidence, his charisma, unassailable; would have made his wants and wishes known from the beginning, braving the consequences later.</p><p>Now, his heartbeat prickled every humid ilm of his skin.  Something like desperation surged through him.  The shape of the outpost was drifting into vision, and—<em>tell her you love her.</em> </p><p>“You wonder?”</p><p>Her laugh rasped in her throat, very dry.  “Very many things.”</p><p>His heart skipped.  Dare he ask it?  “Things you never remembered—needing to wonder?”</p><p>She turned to look at him.  He dug his next footsteps firm into the ground to prevent himself from pouncing.  A sparkle of mischief lit her dark eyes.  “Your ego would never survive them.”</p><p>Oh—his blood would <em>drown him,</em> his heart a live mortar in his chest. </p><p>When he spoke, it came out half purr, half growl.  “Try me.”</p><p>Dry earth crumbled beneath.  “You say that,” she murmured, glancing up as they approached.  “But what would it mean?”  Her hand went stiff in his.  “Tonight—have we—” Her voice trembled.  “Have we gone too far already?”</p><p>“No.”  He spoke too fast; wrung her fingers; tried to tamp down his building panic.  “Unless—did something happen to—”</p><p>He caught a taste of his scare in her breathlessness.  “No.  What you did—” She twined their hands more tightly; stepped closer, sidewise.  “I will never forget it.”</p><p>Almost home.  With every footstep his heart beat harder.  “If I told you—” Words wanted to spill from his lips.  He tried to swallow.  “If you told me regardless, whatever you wanted—” <em>Thaliak, help me.</em>  “Would you trust me?”</p><p>Her hand in his clenched, her grip so hard he almost hissed.</p><p>Her voice was barely a whisper.  “Of course I would trust you.”</p><p>Unseen levin arced between them, tense and electric.  Static filled his ears as he stepped up to the threshold, and she let go of his hand.  His feet creaked in through the door of the cabin.  She followed behind.  A long groan of ramshackle hinges as she shut the door after, and—</p><p>Timid fingers on his left shoulder, tracing past his elbow bend; down along the sinews of his forearm, twining with his hand.</p><p>When he turned, she was closer than expected. </p><p>"Would it be alright if I—" she wet her lips.  “Could I—kiss you again?”</p><p> </p><p>☽ ✧ ☾</p>
<hr/><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>As a matter of fact ...</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Prompt #6: Ocular (G'raha Tia/WoL)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>“How many nights,” and his throat was closing, his words bereft of all bravado, “I dreamt of touching you like this.”</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>: of or relating to the eye<br/>: done or perceived by the eye<br/>: based on what has been seen</p><p>CT flashback continues from chapter prior.<br/>"M" for sexual tension and some gently explicit content.  WoL/G'raha, G'raha POV.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>☽ ✧ ☾</p><p> </p><p>It started soft and slow.</p><p>Her hair brushed his face, tickling like cobwebs, as she pecked the side of his lips.  He willed them not to tremble as she stroked the seam of hers along them, the barest open kiss pressed to coy upper bow and sloped bottom.  “Raha,” she whispered.  “Your mouth is lovely.”</p><p>It was true.  He thought the same—heard it often in jests and confessions from friends.  In Sharlayan, at times, he was tempted to use it; whetted tongue and lips in crooks and corners, library hallways, darkened corridors.  For what was an instrument absent of practice?  What could be done with a longbow, unstrung; a dazzling voice without songs learned and sung?</p><p>Tonight, for all his good-humored conceit, he found himself doubtful.  Would his rehearsal prove sufficient?  The mortar in his chest was bursting.  He wet the mouth, so indicted, and fixed her in his stare. </p><p>This was much more than a clumsy scholar’s fumble.</p><p>Gods give him strength.</p><p>“If I do anything unlovely,” it came out a foolish jumble, “Tell me at once.” </p><p>She grinned and relief rushed like ice through his chest.  “When have I not?”</p><p>An awkward laugh spilled out of him, and her mouth was back, and they were kissing, smiling, happy crinkles at the edges of her eyes.  Her lips were so responsive.  For each of his discovering gestures, her mouth was relaxed and receptive; every timid exploration met with interest.</p><p>Painful awareness, sudden and sharp.  She was three summers older—three autumns wiser—three winters more to be <em>practiced.</em></p><p>He wrapped her in his arms and she gasped, small and shrill; braced her surprise at his shoulders and cocked her chin down at him.  “The bed,” he grunted.  The blood in his face was so hot it drowned his ears.  “Not—<em>to</em> bed, but—”</p><p>She barked.  “To sit,” she guessed, blushing, still smiling, soft-laughing, and his heart thumped with joy at the sound.  He nodded, not caring if he looked too emphatic—or nervous, or eager, or completely <em>ecstatic.</em></p><p>Hand-in-trembling-hand, they stumbled, half-tumbled to the bedframe in the cranny; sank into blankets and cushions parceled from both bedrolls.  So many nights, now, tucked close side by side.  Her insomnia was cured but he was cursed with worsening yearning, and now, when she perched there; when she watched him, dark eyes lit with expectation, he clambered half upon her before he could stop himself.  “Forgive me,” he muttered, scrambling aside—but she snagged him, pulling down, and then he was <em>above.</em></p><p>One leg sprawled open beneath him.  One knee cocked at his hip.  His heartbeat was hard between his legs, hot and aching for contact.  He held his breath and shifted.  “Is this too much?”</p><p>She looked up through dark lashes and faltered.  “No, but—” Very quiet.  “Be careful.”</p><p>He shuddered overhead; felt his ears twitch back in helpless reaction.  “Of course,” he breathed, and moved one hand to prop himself, the other to comb through her hair.  He exhaled through his nose and leaned their foreheads together.  “Would it be wrong of me to tell you—”</p><p>“What.”  Her breath was stale on his lips.  She was still as a statue beneath him, half-stiffened.</p><p>Gently, he stroked the shell of her ear between his fingertips; brushed his thumb down the side of her neck.  Her pulse fluttered like moth wings against it.  “How many nights,” and his throat was closing, his words bereft of all bravado, “I dreamt of touching you like this.”</p><p>She took a breath that rocked them both.  “Me too.”</p><p>They locked eyes.  With the weight of his body above her, cradled hips to cautious hips, he wet his lips.  One slow, open-mouthed kiss.  Then another.  And another.  She trembled. </p><p>“Can—Raha—could you—” Her hips twitched up, and he was nothing but nerve-endings, frozen and raw.</p><p>“Mm?”</p><p>And beneath him, she shifted.  Skirts crumpled as she butterflied her thighs, rearranging until—</p><p>Until he—</p><p>His mouth fell open as she rocked them together; as the trapped curve of his stiffness dragged along the heat of her center, skirts hitching high and apart through the grinding.</p><p>Hot air escaped his lips.  He had never been so hard before.  “Samantha.”</p><p>“Kiss me again,” she said, and nothing else mattered.  Mindless, he led with his tongue and she accepted.  Hands raked down his back to find the curve of his haunches, and she gripped there, pressing him nearer.  She could feel him—<em>wanted to—wanted him, wanted to feel it—</em></p><p>“Raha.”  It was a whine, a whimper—heavy with need.  She spread her knees and he rocked into that potent in-between, verses stuck, unspoken, in his teeth.  Her mouth, caught in his; their clothes, accursed things as he flung himself closer, aching, starving, craving for proximity.</p><p>
  <em>I swore to myself I would never—</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Not without confessing—</em>
</p><p>The tip of his cock caught the mid of her smallclothes and prodded her, hard.  The sound that ripped from her throat made him see red.  His thumbs were at his belt before he could stop them, and he tore them away; shoved himself up on both hands to deny himself.</p><p>“Samantha,” he panted, the very air around them too tight.  “Do you want me to—” But her hand was diving—stroking the shape that pressed in high relief against his trousers. </p><p>Blistering pleasure spread up from his pelvis. </p><p>Pain spiked through his Allagan eye.</p><p>G’raha gasped and cringed from the sensation, right hand lifted to his face.  He collapsed on his flank to the makeshift pallet mattress, and Samantha called out to him.  She sounded faraway and underwater, her words inconsequential beside the sudden burden of insight:</p><p>
  <em>The future is where my destiny awaits.</em>
</p><p>A dizzying sense of déjà vu overwhelmed him.</p><p>Then, strong palms, easing him supine.  Her skin was rough and callused on his neck; tingled with aether as she manhandled him flat to the pallet.  There was a pressure in his sinuses, and he tasted flavors—candle wax and rosehips.</p><p>When his vision swam back into focus, she was leaning overhead.  Her skin was flushed red.</p><p>Concern creased her brow.  “Your eye?”</p><p>He tried to wipe the grimace from his lips, uncomfortably aware of his body.  Everything throbbed, for some reason or another.  A grunt in lieu of yes.  He fixed his squint on the glory of her face and she stroked both hands though his hair, thumbs at his temples.  “Does your head hurt?”</p><p>Another wisp of magick threaded through him and his heart skipped and leapt—skipped one beat, and another, and he yearned to lay everything bare.  To scream, to <em>sing—I love you, I love you—</em></p><p>
  <em>She deserves to know.</em>
</p><p>He took her hands in his; hunched up slowly to a crouch.  “My apologies,” he croaked, finding her eyes again—and from the tension, the terror inside them, he saw she was back in the Tower—cast up through scintillant stairwells and chambers where monsters loomed and crept.</p><p>
  <em>But I have good reason to keep my counsel.</em>
</p><p>He forced an easy grin to his lips.  “Just to be clear—that was <em>not </em>the last of my surprises.”</p><p>Caught between smiling and scowling, she leaned their foreheads together.  “Gods bless.”</p><p> </p><p>☽ ✧ ☾</p>
<hr/><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Prompt #7: Nonagenarian (G'raha Tia/WoL)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The more I learn of the Crystal Tower, the less I am myself.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>: a person whose age is in the nineties<br/>: of or relating to a nonagenarian</p><p>EXTREMELY NSFW, 18+.</p><p>Warning for night terrors, dark fantasy imagery, sexual content, gentle pain/hurt/comfort.<br/>Slightly later in the CT flashback timeline continued from chapters prior.  G'raha/WoL, G'raha POV.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>☽ ✧ ☾</p><p> </p><p>That summer, G'raha dreamt, almost whenever he slept.</p><p>Some nights the imaginings faded, all but forgotten ere he awakened.  But most times, behind his eyelids, the visions stayed painted; vivid blooms burned as if from squinting, accidentally, at the sun.</p><p>That night, in the somnolent realm that he crept, he plucked white roses-of-sharon and pinned them in her hair; tasted the salt of her sweat on her neck, her scent of red petals and beeswax.  He dreamt of pressing her beneath him and scrambling overhead, and the both of them were naked, and the flowers were a bed.  Two-by-two, limbs entangled, the rest was warmed and blurred.  Golden whorls from rosy blossoms, pollen stirred. </p><p>Something glittered.  Sparkling monoliths encircled the meadow like a garland, some divine titan’s supranormal coronet. </p><p>Gleaming spines of crystal, sunlit and haloed in rainbows.</p><p>He dreamt of cool Mor Dhonan soil, pierced by its dazzling spires.  He dreamt of the darkening twilight, aether-tines burning like curved, ghastly pyres.  Ceruleum fire.</p><p>Tectonics shifted. </p><p>The girl beneath him vanished.  His heart became ash.</p><p>Claws of shadow rose like specters from the earth—smoke from the underworld, pulling him in—and G’raha was dragged through the ground, through loam and slag and putrefaction—</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>—too much to contain</em>
</p><p>   devoured by the star—</p><p>      —<em>the next umbral era</em></p><p>in suspended animation—</p><p>
  <em>   —the tower sank into the planet itself</em>
</p><p>        and he was devoured—</p><p>
  <em>—as though he was the </em>
</p><p>
  <em>   tower </em>
</p><p>      he</p><p>
  <em>      was the</em>
</p><p>         tower.</p><p>he</p><p>   was</p><p>       the</p><p><em>          tower he was the tower he was the </em> <em>towerhewasthe—</em></p><p> </p><p>G’raha woke cold and clammy.</p><p>
  <em>Mor Dhona.  NOAH.  The outpost by the Lake—</em>
</p><p>He sat up and gasped.  Tears streamed down his face. </p><p>“Raha?”</p><p>A body rose beside him—<em>one he knew well</em>.Cool fingers found his face—<em>her umbral aspect.</em>  Samantha combed back his hair.  Her voice was a rasp touched with panic.  “What happened?”</p><p>He reached for her wrists and let himself be anchored.  “A nightmare,” he croaked, and it felt false in his mouth; as though the fearsome mirages were more like truths evoked, not mere fiction imagined.  Notwithstanding, he was glad above the phantoms—for the walls between them were crumbling, and she held him, now, in the palms of her hands.</p><p>That much, he knew, was not delusion.</p><p>In the Silvertear darkness, he fixed on her tireless stare—stern and stoic, plagued by her own discordant Echoes of terror.  “What can I do,” she asked, and it was less a question, more a challenge.</p><p>He spread both palms to cover her knuckles; to cage her hands in place.  “A moment,” he breathed, damp crusts of salt on his face.  She moved her thumbs to swipe drying tears from his skin, to brush the wet fringe of his lashes—and he turned to kiss one, stroked lips across callused dampness.  She trembled.  He felt it through the pallet; opened his eyes to find her watching, silent and shadowed.</p><p>Slowly, gently, he moved his mouth down her hand; found the underbelly of her wrist.  Eyes locked together, he scrubbed lips against soft, blood-warmed skin and sucked a kiss there.</p><p>Her breath was a rattle, her lip between her teeth.  “Raha,” she said, hoarse and dusky.  She shivered again and leaned nearer.  “Whatever you wish of me—say it.”</p><p>He held her hooded gaze and moved her hand to his chest; spread her fingers to cup his bare skin.</p><p>
  <em>The more I learn of the Crystal Tower, the less I am myself.</em>
</p><p>G’raha pressed her humid palm across the still-hastened pulse in his breast.  “Remind me where I am.”</p><p>She surged and he braced for the impact, his fluttering heart alive with tension.  Her dark hair curtained down as she crushed him to lumps in the mattress—<em>far better than spectral pink flowers.</em>  “How,” she gasped, sprawling overhead.  Two-by-two, limbs entangled, and everything honed into focus.  Her bare leg against him.  Her gown at her waist.  Her smalls and his nightpants and heat trapped between them. </p><p>His groan was hungry, but shame had escaped him.  “Touch me—”</p><p>And her palm slithered down; down along his middle, down to move his waistband, down, again, to hold him, completely, in hand. </p><p>“Like this?”</p><p>His back arched, tail stiff, eyes wide and desperate.  “Just like that.”</p><p>She held her breath—held his stare—worked her grip gently around him.  He shoved his open mouth into her neck; moaned into her skin as she traced along his shape, fingers on his outline, ilm by pulsing ilm.  “Should I—”</p><p>“Keep going,” he gasped—for he never dreamt it might <em>happen.</em></p><p>Her touch, peak to plinth, to the heaviness beneath.  She balanced his weight in her hand; stroked up the length of his shaft; squeezed her palm around his cockhead, repeated, and he grunted. </p><p>“I might come,” came his warning, rough and strained.</p><p>Her lips on his shoulder felt like petals.  She was trembling.  “I—want to make you.”</p><p>Red.  He fucked into her hand.  His teeth caught the flesh of her neckline and he knew it was bruising, but her fist was snug and slickened—<em>from him, he was impatient—</em>and his mind and heart were racing, eager body at her command.  She wanted—she wanted to <em>touch him</em>—<em>wanted him to—</em></p><p>Static filled his ears.  His climax was blinding, thighs wracked with convulsions, wide eyes sightless.  He came all over his stomach, his spend obscenely warm against his skin.</p><p>She stroked him through the throes of it and he tried to ignore his own sounds—the way he huffed and groaned and choked on dry midnight—focused instead on the touch of her mouth.</p><p>“I hope that helped.”  A kiss on his jawbone.</p><p>He wanted to laugh; to howl, loud and feral.  His voice was clipped and collected, instead.  “Much.”</p><p>Her hand was tense as she moved it away, robotic with rigor from the motions.  Then she slipped from the pallet.  He watched her yank down her gown and disappear behind the partition.  For a moment he froze in apprehension, anxious, for a moment, sensing <em>damage.</em></p><p>She returned with a rag, warmed and dampened.  Even in the gloom, he could tell her face was blushing. </p><p>“For the mess.”  She clambered back into the small bed.</p><p>He took the offered implement and applied it, mopping up the dregs of mortal satisfaction.  “Thank you,” he said, absurdly breathy, referring to too much and not enough.  His eyes flicked up.  She propped herself stiffly on her flank and watched him, shy but searching, attention on the apex of his legs.</p><p>Her cheeks darkened.  “Might help you sleep better,” she said, looking away.</p><p>She rolled to put her back to him.</p><p>He exhaled; stuffed himself back in his pants; discarded the rag to the floor—something to tend in the morning, for her discomfort was building, so thick he could taste it in the air.  Cautiously, he reached out.  “Samantha.”  Words spilled, careless, from his mouth.  “Whatever you wish of me—say it.”</p><p>Her body rose and fell with a breath.  She met his eyes over her shoulder.</p><p>“Tomorrow,” she said.</p><p>And that was that.</p><p> </p><p>☽ ✧ ☾</p><hr/><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Prompt #8: Clamor (G'raha Tia/WoL, Scion & Ironworks Friendship)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>She was gone from the outpost.</p><p>She was never gone from the outpost.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>: to make a din<br/>: a loud continuous noise<br/>: to become loudly insistent</p><p>I guess this story wants to be sequential for now!<br/>Continues from previous chapter.  Posted INCREDIBLY FAST during work, forgive bad typos.</p><p>More references that are very NSFW, 18+.<br/>G'raha/WoL, starting with WoL POV, and then G'raha POV.<br/>I sure love the Scions and the Ironworks Danger Nerd Squad.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>✧ ☄ ☽</p><p> </p><p>She lay hunched away and panicked in the darkness; waited for the music of his breathing to calm back into its familiar lullaby.  The night outside was quiet, Mor Dhona hushed and silent, but the clamor inside—in her mind—only deafened.</p><p>Sleep would not return to her.  Not tonight.  Not when she could feel the ghost of him clasped in her hand, his pulsing crescendo of heartbeat, his sounds of raw pleasure, body spasmed under her touch.</p><p>What have you done?  <em>What were you thinking?</em></p><p>What, in heavens or hells, took control of your mind and <em>possessed you?</em></p><p><em>You did because you love him,</em> came the murmur in her head.</p><p>She ignored it; clenched her jaw against the stubborn truth.</p><p>Samantha burned.  Hurt hung raw in her belly—curled like hot iron or ice—made her want to writhe, and retch, and rid herself of pestilence.</p><p>Love, she believed, in the end, was illusion.  Love was a viper, primed to strike.</p><p>Love was poison hemlock, and Samantha—<em>Rosalyn Floravale</em>—was better off without.</p><p>It felt foul to liken G’raha Tia to hemlock when he was the farthest thing from noxious; a breath of relentless fresh air every moment he existed, slipping past every shutter and crack of her defenses.</p><p>She curled in on herself further.</p><p>Only ilms between them now.  Less than that.  She could easily reach for him; roll over and embrace the truth instead of escaping.  Wrap her arms around his solid shape, stroke between his legs and show him, in no uncertain terms, how wanton and wanting she felt.</p><p><em>The task at hand is too momentous—</em>but Thancred’s long-precedent warnings died at the vision that danced through her head.  A frisson pebbled her skin as she imagined—<em>whatever you wish of me, say it</em>. </p><p>She pressed her thighs together.</p><p><em>Beg like the good girl you are.</em> </p><p>Filthy words filled her mouth.  Raphael taught her to crave them.  But now—</p><p>
  <em>I want Raha, Raha, Raha.</em>
</p><p>She thought of his cock, of the weight in her hand; the girth of him hilted, his hard-throbbing heartbeat completely <em>within.</em>  A whine rose to press at her lips and she gulped it out of existence.</p><p>Behind her, in contrast, his breathing deepened, evened.  When she was sure beyond doubt he was dreaming—hopefully peaceful—she slipped, painstakingly slowly, from the pallet; sidestepped his tail and risked a glance back.</p><p>His face was slackened and relaxed, paleness aglow in the darkness.  Long auburn lashes, still clumped from the stress of his nightmares, fanned above the freckled constellations on his skin.  His nose, pert and perfect as a button, was sunburned very slightly, copper hair mussed from his brow—ears propped on the pillow—all so careless and disheveled, cavalierly beguiling.</p><p>Raha of the G tribe was small and very mighty, and the witch-watcher was frightened—pierced through the heart by an arrow—ravished, soul-round, by the rascal rapscallion, his sharp wit more bewitching than full indices of spells.</p><p>Concealment was never her forte.  But tonight—</p><p>She took a breath and snatched her staff.  A hissed incantation.  Patchwork static enveloped her aether, wrinkling and messy, and the air around her choked and muffled, gagging mouthfuls of cotton.  The noise within and without her was dampened, the pulse in her ears the last sound.</p><p>Samantha snatched her satchel.</p><p>Love made Rosalyn stupid.  Samantha needed space to think.</p><p>As the stars winked and twinkled for Mor Dhona, she crept over the threshold, and well past the brink.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p>☽ ✧ ☾</p><p> </p><p>Tomorrow, she said, and he heard a promise; a thin silver ballad that lured him to sleep.</p><p>He awakened to lips like a desert and aches in his head—not to mention a half-empty bed.</p><p>She was gone from the outpost.</p><p>She was never gone from the outpost.</p><p>He wet his dry mouth with stale water and washed his teeth instead of eating; scrounged for his things and got dressed.  His belts and buckles and belongings seemed like burdens as he bound them, too convoluted.  Dull pain throbbed in his temple, but tea could wait until he found her.</p><p>His longbow a line on his back, he jogged afield, but she was nowhere to be seen—not throwing flares or gales past bluffs or spires, the clamor of magick hot and raucous around him.  </p><p>Ears back, tail lashing, his heart shoved itself into his neck.</p><p>G’raha swallowed it down.</p><p>He found Cid squatted at camp at Saint Coinach’s, minus Wedge and Biggs—refused the offered coffee.  “Have—” He fought the cracking of his voice; the urge to ask after Rammbroes.  The answer was the Tower, or the Toll.  “Have you happened to speak with Samantha this morning?”</p><p>Garlond looked G’raha up and down like one might measure an ailing apparatus.  “You’re the one she sticks to,” he said, bland as proclaiming the weather.  His shirt was stained, his face tired, and the questions in his eyes came shortly after, like their backdrop of overcast skies—blue and grey and incisive.</p><p>“If I were you,” drawled a bored tenor.  “I would check with the Scions.”  G’raha looked up to find Scaeva shambling towards them.  “Not that I have any notable stock in her whereabouts—”</p><p>“For the moment,” Cid added.</p><p>“Or ever,” insisted the other.</p><p>Cid merely shrugged and sipped his coffee, pouring another.  “When you do find her,” he directed to G’raha, “Would you be so kind as to mention the chest piece is mended, and way to the throne room is open, which means of course that—”</p><p>“Xande awaits.”  It came out of him bitter, when he should have been thrilled—a season of research spent clinching this moment.  There was a visible glitch in his system.  Two pairs of pale Garlean eyes trained upon him, far too smart and piercing for his liking, and so G’raha puffed with indelicate bluster—the sort he reserved for such awkward occasions.  “Time to fetch the living weapon, then.”</p><p>A cruel glint of insight from Scaeva—keen bastard—and gentle deflation from Garlond.  “My least favorite label to apply to her,” muttered the latter, something cutting in his stare.</p><p>Reprobation.</p><p>
  <em>Fair sentence.</em>
</p><p>“Yet you use her irrespective.”  Nero’s sigh was overinflated by design.  He spread out his hands and accepted the cup Garlond offered.  “Eikon Slayer for hire.”</p><p>Cid pinched the bridge of his nose and dug in his pocket—retrieved a tiny device.  “Call me when you find her,” he said, handing G’raha the linkpearl.  “We’ve plenty preparations to make.”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>He was outside the Toll when the clamor struck him—her shout, low and husky, stirring cinders in his chest—then the smell of earth and charcoal, something burning, fume and ash.</p><p>He would know her magick anywhere.</p><p>“Better,” came a second voice.  “But again.”</p><p>G’raha steeled himself and strolled toward the sounds; found a crumbling, tucked-away plaza.</p><p>Skirts blowing back in a preternatural wind, sweat glistened on her skin as Samantha widened her stance, staff swept up in a slow, severe arc.  Fire rained down from the heavens.  From a safe distance, someone watched—Y'shtola Rhul, the conjurer, contemplation in her quick Seeker stare.  “Tap into the ley lines,” she was saying.  “Cast smarter, not harder—or so Matoya would say.”</p><p>Samantha slouched, against the weight of the aether or the direction, he could not tell.  “My stomach’s too empty for this,” she grumbled.</p><p>Y’shtola’s laugh sparkled.  “Well, then—” And white ears perked to G’raha.</p><p>Jogging closer, he summoned the bluster again.  “Greetings and salutations,” he sang.  And, because he wanted her to know it:  “Took me long enough to find you.”</p><p>The way Samantha lurched at once to face him—the glow that lit her— “Raha!”</p><p>His heart skipped three beats, at least.</p><p>
  <em>Had he been imagining things?</em>
</p><p>Rhul’s eyes were biting as she watched him—the eyes of a predator quartering prey.  “Ah, the boy himself.”</p><p>
  <em>Maybe not so imagined.</em>
</p><p>He pushed a smile to his lips—his finest, most jolly.  “I come with a message from Garlond,” he announced.  He hoped his teeth glittered through his lie about the motive, true though it may be.  G’raha cleared his throat and bowed with a flourish.  “The way to the throne room is opened.”</p><p>He flipped his fringe from his face as he rose, and from the way Samantha looked utterly punctured, she took the news same as him.  “I spent the bloody morning training,” she grumbled.  Her focus slid vaguely in the direction of Saint Coinach’s.  “Horrible timing.”</p><p>Y’shtola unholstered her wand and ambled towards her in the square.  “Let’s get you some breakfast,” she offered, squinting at the horizon.  “Or brunch, as it were.”  She flexed her hand in a come-hither gesture, and Samantha shuffled over.  “I have business to attend with Urianger, but I can walk you.”  Her eyes flicked to G’raha.  “And I suppose you can come, too.”</p><p>Anxiety coiled in his stomach.  The way she <em>spoke</em>—the way she watched him—was next to sardonic.</p><p>… <em>Just what had they discussed?</em></p><p>He hoped his grin seemed normal.  “By your leave.”  </p><p>“Have you eaten?”  It was Samantha.  She turned to lift her eyebrows and pin him with her attention, strapping back her staff and stretching both arms to the sky.</p><p>“Yes,” he lied.  And then, as though his own body conspired against him, his stomach growled loudly.  His tail lashed and his smile turned sheepish.  “… No.”</p><p>Samantha blinked at him.  “Why would you say <em>yes,</em> then?”</p><p>Rhul fixed him with a deadpan glance.  “Perchance he thinks they imply the same thing.”</p><p>Static filled his ears, but he kept determinedly grinning.  “Y’shtola please,” Samantha snorted, openly unfazed.  She supinated her gauntleted wrists and presented them to the conjurer.  “Be nice.”</p><p>“If you insist,” said the other, and G’raha tried not to gawk in bald fascination as aether illumined the air.  Smoke of bright, ambiguous aquamarine snaked in whorls around Samantha’s half-gloves, lingering over her soul stones.  “Purification,” came Y’shtola’s explanation.</p><p>The Warrior wore focuses over her hands, the closer to the quarterstaff, the better. </p><p>“It aches today,” she muttered, wincing. </p><p>“You trained fiercely—but remember,” Y’shtola flexed the mage’s wrists, helping stretch them.  “Use your ley lines.  Better to tap into the heart of the land than channel aether all yourself.”</p><p>They began the traipse back to the Toll.  G’raha fell in stride beside them.  His hand twitched to twine with Samantha’s, the compulsion to touch her fanatic—but he was too aware of Rhul’s sarcastic stare along his backbone, crisp and judgmental.  She fell behind, it seemed, to keep eyes on his tail.</p><p>“Is Thancred at the Stones?”  Samantha glanced over her shoulder. </p><p>The sprawl of the settlement loomed nearer, the chatter of Revenant’s Toll growing louder.</p><p>Y’shtola laughed.  “I hardly keep tabs on him.”</p><p>Samantha must have felt his glance of question, because she turned down to G’raha at once.  “He cooks incredible breakfasts,” she explained, leaning closer, and jealousy curled in his gut.  He felt envy for the Scions.  Not quite resentment—but bitter, somehow, that they knew her <em>before.</em></p><p>Not to mention at <em>breakfast.</em></p><p>“Ask after the pancakes,” Y’shtola suggested, meandering up beside him.  “But do take care,” and she smiled, then, blithe and menacing, “If you insist on mixing business with pleasure.”</p><p>And then she was gone, down the fork in another direction.</p><p>His heart made a racket that crowded his ears.  “Samantha,” he muttered, sure he knew the answer—and despite the power, the passion, the nauseating potency of his feelings for her, G’raha Tia was not one to back down from his questions.  He steeled himself.  “Was she referring to—”</p><p>“Last night?”  Her sidelong glance.</p><p>He fixed her with a probing stare, spine steeled, ears forward.</p><p>Samantha sighed.  “The truth is—” and he watched as she tugged at the sweat-dampened collar of her blouse, unpinning one, then two buttons.  Come to think of it, she hardly ever wore them fully fastened.</p><p>His eyes flicked down to where she gestured, and—</p><p>Blood was back in his ears, an inferno under his skin.  He croaked through the drought in his mouth.  “Ah.”</p><p>A bruise in the pattern of bite marks.</p><p>“Once she noticed, I had to explain,” and G’raha was vindicated, at least, that she was blushing violently, too.  She buttoned back up.  “Not that it stopped her from making assumptions—” She huffed and scowled.  “Honing black magick is intricate enough without Y’shtola Rhul roasting you all the way through it.”</p><p>He coughed a laugh.  “You left this morning to train with her, then?”</p><p>For one breath too long, she was silent. </p><p>Their shoes made a clamor, overloud.  “Not entirely,” came the confession.</p><p>His heart flopped and thumped like a fish stuck aground.  “I see.”</p><p>The Seventh Heaven was before them, the threshold mere footsteps ahead.  But between them, hidden by layers, her little finger brushed his.  “I think I’ve had enough assumptions for one day.”</p><p>His ribs felt too tight.  “No more then,” he muttered—and he snatched and squeezed her hand.</p><p>She squeezed back.  Adrenaline surged, ice and fire.</p><p>“Thank you for looking for me,” she said.</p><p>Validation made him giddy, vertigo-dizzy.  “Any time at all.”</p><p> </p><p>☽ ✧ ☾</p>
<hr/><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Prompt #9: Lush (G'raha Tia/WoL, Scion Friendship)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The Warrior of Light, Samantha Rosalyn Floravale, was a book thief, and Thaliak help him—</p><p>G’raha had never been more attracted.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>: appealing to the senses<br/>: characterized by abundance<br/>: savory, delicious, opulent, sumptuous</p><p>Continues to continue from prior.<br/>Some gentle NSFW, mostly humor and friendship.</p><p>G'raha Tia POV.  G'raha/WoL, Scion friendship.  I love Thancred.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>☽ ✧ ☾</p><p> </p><p>The first bite of omelette was so lush, G’raha lost his train of thought.</p><p>“How did you—”</p><p>“I will accept favors, applause, and generous gratuity payments,” Thancred crooned, flipping the pat of hot egg in the pan.  “Preferably all at once.”  He glanced over his shoulder.  “Next?”</p><p>Samantha leapt from the table, leaning her plate out.  “If you please.”</p><p>Waters snorted but obliged, sliding her the steaming roll of folded tidbits-and-cheese.  “When <em>was </em>the last morning you dined with us, Samantha?”  He slanted her a glance.  “It would seem your attention has been—elsewhere.”</p><p>G’raha caught himself before he choked.  Good thing, because it would have truly been a shame to waste a single bite.  He took a sip of tea and kept eyes trained on the table, forcing stillness in his tail and ears—hearkened intently.</p><p>“Don’t play a fool with me, Thancred.”  There was the sound of fork-and-knife.  G’raha peeked up as Samantha speared a lumpy, buttery chunk and shoved it in her mouth.  “Without Cid, the lot of us—” She chewed and swallowed and pointed her fork at the omelette-cooking accuser.  “I won’t take us back to the castrum—but you know <em>very well </em>why I would help him.”</p><p>A new voice chirped into play.  “Because you are strong, and brave—and a little bit grouchy, but I always did like that.”  A tiny person with petal-colored hair crept up beside G’raha, and this time when he startled, his tail threatened to puff.  Tataru Taru.  Samantha introduced them before.</p><p>The diminutive Scion grinned up at him kindly.  “How do you do again, G’raha?”</p><p>He laughed nervously and set down his teacup.  “Very well, thank you, Mistress Tataru.  And yourself?”</p><p>“Oh, well enough, I suppose.”  She shrugged rather aggressively and clambered into a chair.  “Though I would be faring far better with an omelette,” she emphasized loudly, hand cupped by her mouth.</p><p>Thancred chuckled.  “My public awaits.”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>They left the table thoroughly stuffed.</p><p>Another sort of fullness packed his chest when she touched his hand again. </p><p>Their knuckles, back-to-back.  “Did the breakfast live up to expectation?”</p><p>Past the kitchen and the lobby and down a long hall, they were almost alone again.  “Yes,” he confessed, flexing his fingers against hers.  “Your Scions are certainly possessed of myriad talents.”</p><p>She snorted, hand withdrawn, staring down at him.  “What do you mean <em>my</em> Scions?”</p><p>“Are they not?”  He aimed a sly glance at her face.  Reckless, confident G’raha, uncharacteristically mustering pluck.  “The rogue throwing knives in the kitchen, the conjurer sharing her wealth of arcana.”  He raised his eyebrows.  “The receptionist, even, singing your praises.”</p><p>She pursed her lips and blushed down at him.  “What would that make you, then?”</p><p>Before he could settle his heart to summon his answer, they quite literally stumbled across someone else.  G’raha wrung his memory to put a name to the boyish young face—</p><p>“Leveilleur,” he said brightly.</p><p>Alphinaud carried an armful of hardbacks, blinking owlishly between them.  “Ah—how do you do?”  He looked lost and unhappier for it.  “Twelve forgive but your name has escaped me.”</p><p>“G’raha Tia,” said the erstwhile anonymous.  “Might I help with those books?”</p><p>“Oh—” the one towing tomes paused and stuttered.  “No need.  I was merely—” his eyes slid in the direction of Samantha and he coughed and flushed a deep red.  “Good gods Samantha what in the <em>heavens—”</em></p><p>She snorted.  “Alphinaud, please,” and when G’raha cast her a glance, she was half through detaching her sweat-and-ash stained bodice.  “I’m wearing <em>two </em>tops and a chemise—not to mention the—”</p><p>“That hardly matters in terms of propriety,” spat the other, hefting his way past them.</p><p>G’raha laughed helplessly.  “Why are you undressing in the hallway?”</p><p>“I need a bath,” she grunted, as though that gave it sense.  She huffed a breath through her nose and peeled open the last straps and fastenings, shrugging out of the shell like shedding cicada.  She tucked the thing under her arm in a way he was sure wasn’t good for it.  “Would you mind waiting in my quarters?” </p><p>“Your—” He blinked.  <em>“What?”</em></p><p>A good thing she snatched his hand and played coxswain.  A good thing, because as time passed, she rendered him more and more brainless.  All thought was rotted, atrophied, <em>decayed, </em>his mind so suddenly devoid of his intellect that for all his so-flaunted knowledge as a scholar, he retrogressed into less than a schoolboy in her presence.</p><p>Some turns and bends down a nondescript passage.  A door likewise unremarkable was parted.</p><p>She dragged him in behind her and gestured emphatically.  “Here slumbers the beast.”</p><p>Something inside him was wary; uneasy, invading her privacy.  But then, he supposed he had been invited.  Past the threshold, G’raha took in the unadorned fixtures—bunk, simple desk, wooden chair—the far sparser flashes of personal belongings, here and there.  Her satchel.  He double-checked and squinted at that.  “The bath’s down the way,” she was saying, kicking off boots and padding to the closet.  “If you could wait here—that is, if you don’t mind—it won’t take me long to wash off.”</p><p>Samantha’s sense of propriety was—flexible.  How often had she undressed in his presence, by choice or compulsion alike?  How many skirts sheared by tooth and claw of monsters; how many stockings, tarnished by travel?  Her blouses, replaced by long nightgowns, the sort warm and soft while she slept—</p><p>He planted himself in the chair by the desk.  Nothing was different.  Not really.</p><p>But suddenly, everything was changed. </p><p>Now, haunted by the ghost of lips on his mouth—her grasp between his legs—</p><p>“Could I not make myself more useful?” he asked, derailing that train of thought.</p><p>Her voice was muffled.  “If you seek chores you will find them,” she warned him.  “Why not rest a bit instead—or look through my books, I have some you might like.”  She crept back to vision, the side of his sight, and it took every onze of his willpower to focus on the stacks of paper and hardbacks.</p><p>“Which would you recommend?” and the instant the question was out of his mouth, he regretted it, because she was crossing the room—she was near—the fringe of her dressing gown tickled his nape. </p><p>One arm in his periphery, reaching over the table.  She patted a handful of tomes.  “Archaeological arcana,” she announced, and he loved the way her voice slipped into something firmer then, scholastic.  She pointed at a spine.  “My favorite might tickle your interest—lots of theories scrawled into the margins.  Not mine.”  A bit quieter.  “I—possibly—feasibly—stole it from an expert.”</p><p>G’raha grinned, fierce with mischief.  “Excellent.”</p><p>She shuffled away, and he defied the urge to watch before she was gone.</p><p>Only once the door clicked shut did he slide the book from its stack.  The title was embossed across the front—<em>Autochthonous Aetherology: Anathematic Arcana and Theurgical Tradition—</em>and behind the cover a note was scrawled.  A code he couldn’t decipher.  Some key to a catalogued personal collection, perhaps; a list from which the volume in question was stranded.</p><p>The Warrior of Light, <em>Samantha Rosalyn Floravale,</em> was a <em>book thief, </em>and Thaliak help him—</p><p>G’raha had never been <em>more attracted.</em></p><p>His eyes glossed over the table of contents—topics that were, in fact, to his interest—and he flipped to a chapter—<em>The Ritual—</em>to skim it.  But soon he found his attention robbed by his surroundings: Samantha’s possessions and knickknacks, the dress on the bed, the pot of red-blooming roses by the desk.  He was in her lair, after a fact; where the beast, she said, <em>rests.</em>  But she never mentioned a room in Mor Dhona, and he supposed he could assume that since she chose to stay in the outpost, she was not incredibly attached to the notion.</p><p>Which reminded him—</p><p>He turned in the chair to find, again, her satchel; the knapsack she carried while they travelled, filled with multifarious provisions.  Had she come here amid her mysterious disappearance?</p><p>And why, in fact, had she left? </p><p>He had his supposition, his conjecture—flushed to wonder what he looked like in that bed.</p><p>Appalling, came the suggestion.  Vile and debauched.  Obscured, by a mercy, in the darkness, while he rutted into her hand.  Twelve, what must she think of him, having witnessed that act?  Granted, she was a participant—</p><p>
  <em>Raha, your mouth is lovely.</em>
</p><p>Heat rushed up his neck as he imagined—her eyes on his swollen-hard cock—her hand—<em>gods, but she felt it—</em>the way his heart raced in his flesh, his blood red-hot—<em>for her, for you, S—</em></p><p>Pain spiked through his right temple.  He bore down against it.  Not now.  Not when he was in her domain.  Not when there was learning to glean from her treasures, the better to know how to care for their keeper.</p><p>He turned back to the book, and the door behind him clicked open, and shut.</p><p>The perfume of rosehips was fragrant but mild, not enough to overtake her sweat—but he was glad, because he loved her natural scent.  The heat from the washroom clung as she approached, and he breathed her in, hungry, greedy—<em>focus on the text.</em>  “Oh,” she said, wandering up, and he felt wet hair on his neck.  “My favorite chapter.”</p><p>He tried to quell the sprinting in his chest as she leaned near; as he was struck by the urge to simply <em>grab her.</em>  “I admit to mere scanning,” he said, and with a note of honest surprise, “That bath was very fast.”</p><p>Samantha cackled.  “You could have one, too, if you wanted,” and she was in the side of his vision, and he couldn’t look away—couldn’t prevent his stare from roaming down her back, down the long line of her body and legs, her dressing gown damp, her hair a dark clump gathered up in one hand.  The other reached for the handle of the closet.  “Oh, that reminds me—”</p><p>She turned to find him ears tensed, tail ruffled, thighs bunched to pounce.</p><p>Eyes locked.  Static crackled.</p><p>“What,” his breathless ask.</p><p> </p><p>☽ ✧ ☾</p>
<hr/><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>An abrupt cliffhanger, but my time is limited these days.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Prompt #10: Avail (G'raha Tia/WoL)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Her whine was a reverent whisper.  “Who let you be so beautiful?”</p><p>"Merciful heaven,” he breathed.  "Merciful something—to make you want to look on me and say it.”</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>: to be of use or advantage : serve<br/>: to make use of : to take advantage of<br/>: to produce or result in as a benefit or advantage : gain<br/>: advantage toward attainment of a goal or purpose</p><p>Extremely, extremely NSFW.  Continues from prior.  </p><p>Very light dubcon in the sense of "two people so mindlessly thrilled to make contact that full terms of consent are unclear."</p><p>G'raha/WoL.  G'raha POV.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>☽ ✧ ☾</p><p> </p><p>The air was filled with static, and they were locked by the eyes.</p><p>G’raha wondered if her heartbeat ran faster; if it rattled the cage of her breastbone, under the lace of her robe, fighting the chasm of space yet between them, holding them back in tense silence.</p><p>Air lifted her chest.  He watched the rising; how damp, well-worn fabric crinkled over her outline.  “Why—” her voice cracked.</p><p>The hairs along his forearms bristled, then his legs, then spine from base to tailtip.  He must look like a monster, he thought.  An animal readied to snap.  His cock was a hard pulsing line beneath his trousers, his indignity concealed by slouching fabric.  He was glad, at least, for that. </p><p>His lips were, however, less helpful.  “Can I—?”</p><p>
  <em>What?  </em>
</p><p>What was he<em> asking?</em></p><p>Her focus rippled over him, lips apart, eyes distracted.  She closed her hand around the laces at her neckline, drawing his eyes to the—<em>gods, the soft curve of her breasts</em>— “Raha—?”</p><p><em>Damn, damn, damn, by Oschon, by Althyk— </em>“If I happened to ask,” breathless, torrential<em>—</em> “If I wanted to kiss you—” his lip between teeth, his tongue swiping over, too dry, too chapped.</p><p>
  <em>This would never do—</em>
</p><p>Her eyes were wide, and he wanted to drown in them; to die from shame and aching. </p><p>The words hitched in her mouth.  “You want to kiss me <em>now?”</em> </p><p><em>Now, and again, and always ever after you phenomenal, phantasmic—</em> “Yes,” and it was a croak, but he managed to croak it.  G’raha the frog, and Samantha, the witch for his princess—odd-eyed, redheaded toad-prince, cursed to the chair as she swayed one step forward, her brows and lips tense.</p><p>And then her body heat was near enough to feel it again.  Her scent of saltwater and rosehips overcame him.  Her hair was a dark, wet stripe down one breast, and he wanted to lick through the fabric.  He flexed the heels of his boots to the floor and watched her towering figure move beside him, his cock alive, ribcage rising, strained thighs spreading slightly.</p><p>She touched his shoulder, his neck—his tattoo with her thumbprint—and he was drinking her in ilm by ilm; the sway of her chest as she leaned down to meet him, the pebble of nipples, the plane of naked, continuous skin he glimpsed past the tie at her throat.  “I want to kiss you, too,” she said, bracing their foreheads together, her mouth just out of reach.  Her brow was still tensed.</p><p>He tried not to whine.  “But—?”</p><p>Her breath washed his lips, warm and shallow.  “Are we—spoiling it?”</p><p>The pulse in his groin made him senseless, his eyes slipping back down the slope of her neck; down to peek past that gap in her bath gown, greedy to see.  “Spoiling—?” it came out a whisper.</p><p>The tip of her nose on his cheek.  He tipped his face up to nuzzle. </p><p>“You—this summer—” Another shaky exhale from her lips.  “Everything about it.”</p><p>The tempo tucked between his legs seemed to beg her to <em>spoil it, spoil it, spoil—</em></p><p>He closed his eyes and stifled a whimper.  “Tell me off,” he begged, fingers flexing.  He grabbed the ledge of the chair with both hands.  “Tell me to stop and I <em>will in an instant.”</em>   His voice was a groan, his tail stiff through the open seatback.  “Make me misremember, pretermit—” his hips shifted.  “Forget that I—”</p><p>Her presence above him.  She smoothed her robe tight to her thighs before she sat.  And then her weight was hovered in his lap, knees spread to bracket, arms braced on his shoulders and the chairback.  She was naked but for the bath gown and warm as an ember against him.</p><p>Her nose touched the side of his neck, and he wondered if she could feel it—how fast his heart was racing.  A very soft kiss on his skin.  “The last thing I want is to forget.”</p><p>Both of his hands leapt, seizing her waist, and her back arched at the contact—arched the heat of her body straight down on his cock.  A curse spilled from his lips as he thrust up, and she choked on a groan of sheer bliss.  “Gods, Raha,” she hissed, and—<em>oh—she wants to feel it—</em></p><p>His fingertips gripped, finding the curve of her hips—both bruising and timid.  She raked open lips across his panting mouth and rearranged herself on his lap—<em>sovereign taking her dominion— </em>“Sit down on me,” he grunted.</p><p>She blushed.  “But—am I not too big to—”</p><p>He dragged the blunted tips of his claws down her backside; down the glorious swell of her thighs.  “Sit on me,” he rumbled, and it came out a growl, dark, demanding.  The chair groaned and her knees spread as she sank, their bodies sliding together.  </p><p>A small, keening noise filled her mouth.  “I wish we—I want to—”</p><p>“What,” he gasped.  He craned his neck up and she kissed him all the way down it; kissed the bob in his throat, the bend of his jaw; one side of his mouth and the other, and the corners, and his lips, both upper and lower—</p><p>By the gods, he was going to come—going to come from <em>kissing alone—</em></p><p>Her whine was a reverent whisper.  “Who let you be so beautiful?”</p><p>G’raha groaned and thrust up against her.  “Merciful heaven,” he breathed, blood hot in his cock and ears and neck.  “Merciful something—to make you want to look on me and say it.”</p><p>Her open lips on his.  Her tongue in his mouth.  Her wet hair fell like cobwebs on his skin, hugged his nose and throat like cloth.  Siren come to drown him.  He gave her his breath.  Chins tipped and teeth clicked in impact.  She gasped, and he laughed, and <em>she</em> laughed, panting.</p><p>“What are we doing?” she asked.</p><p>He smiled mindlessly against her.  “I think they call it <em>frotting.”</em></p><p>She barked, hot on his skin.  “Were we not just meant to be kissing?”</p><p>He bit his lip and kissed her—and <em>kissed her and kissed her and—</em>she was squirming so <em>much, </em>building <em>so much friction.</em>  “I might ruin my trousers,” he managed.  She froze in place; swept back her damp hair with one hand.</p><p>“Do you want to take them off?”</p><p>All sound muffled, pressure ringing in his ears—the wake of a shockwave.  “What?”</p><p>“Or I could—” she rearranged herself, and his back arched hard as her hand slipped over his waistband, over the front of his— “Is this too much?” and he was staring up at her, shaking his head in panic.</p><p>“No,” he gasped.  “Keep going,” and she was tugging on his belt—fiddling the latches—yanking it down, making space between the buckle and the clasps, unfastening his pants.  Her palm dipped to cup down around him, the constriction almost painful as she dragged him out.  She tipped to his thigh to avoid making contact—to avoid, because she was practically naked, and his cock was out, and it was a matter of ilms, then, to fuck her—to snatch her legs into his hands and pull her over him again—</p><p>“Wait,” he groaned.  He could smell her, smell how <em>wet—</em>smelled the musk of her arousal and it made him see red.  <em>She wants me,</em> he realized.  <em>She feels the same as I.  </em>And somehow the knowledge was anguish, deep inside.</p><p>
  <em>The future is where my destiny awaits.</em>
</p><p>Her hand paused at the base of him, cold air on aching skin.  “Too much now?”</p><p>He swallowed hard.  “No.”  He used his palm to cover her knuckles; to hold her still there.</p><p>“What, then,” she asked, and it was tiny, and timid, and frail.</p><p>His cock pulsed against their hands.  Her fingers twitched.  He met her stare and moved his wrist to pump her palm along him slowly.  She swirled her thumb over his tip and he grunted. “Let me touch you this time instead.”</p><p>Something nagged at the back of his mind but he ignored it—had no <em>choice </em>but to ignore it, because she was moving overhead—she moved and he glimpsed the dark curls at the peak of her legs—</p><p>A chirping rhythm, interrupting.  But he was frozen, her legs half-spread, crouched just above his straining cock and he could <em>feel her—soft and warm and—gods—</em>he pressed his hips up, unthinking, to avail himself, to reach for a hint, for a taste, for a—<em>scalding stroke of velvet—</em></p><p>One, two three, buzzing chirrups.  <em>One, two, three.</em> </p><p>It was in his pants, he realized.</p><p>“Cid,” he hissed.</p><p>Samantha stiffened above.  <em>“What?”</em></p><p>He screwed his eyes shut and grimaced; shoved a hand down over his cock to protect her from himself.  “The linkpearl in my pocket,” he coughed out.  “I was meant to call him when I found you.”</p><p>Her brow furrowed down at him.  “Are you telling me Cid Garlond is calling you <em>now?”</em></p><p>
  <em>Buzz buzz buzz.</em>
</p><p>He winced.  “Duty calling,” his weak attempt at a jest.  “But also Cid Garlond.”</p><p>She huffed and blushed and sank down against his knuckles, and he was so thoroughly humiliated he could barely thrill in the feel of <em>the first time he touched her.</em>  “Hells damn it,” she grunted.</p><p>His throat was dry, his lips chapped, and he was ashamed of what he very nearly tried to <em>do to her without asking.</em>  “I am so, so sorry,” he rasped, ears flat, tongue leaden, tail limp and heavy.</p><p>Two hands snatched his face as she dismounted, her weight removed, but breath back on his mouth.  “Answer the call,” she said, kissing him softly.  “Before I apologize, too.”</p><p>She straightened—<em>buzz buzz buzz—</em>and he stretched to chase her, brushing lips and noses together.  “Why would you apologize,” he said, cramming himself uncomfortably, gracelessly back into his trousers.  His belt buckle made a complaint as he latched it.  “You were perfect.”</p><p>
  <em>Buzz buzz buzz.</em>
</p><p>Samantha puffed and pouted and took his chin in her hand.  <em>“Answer your godsdamned pocket.”</em></p><p>He grinned and kissed her palm and pulled the linkpearl out.  A muffled voice on the line.  “About bloody time.”  Cid was rarely frustrated enough to transcend his permanent aura of exhaustion, but now— “Are you well?  What in the world kept you from answering—”</p><p>“There was some—interference.”  G’raha stared into her eyes.  She was caught between laughing and scowling.  “But what was lost has been found.”</p><p> </p><p>☽ ✧ ☾</p>
<hr/><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Prompt #11: Ultracrepidarian (G'raha Tia/WoL)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>“Do mine ears deceive,” he tried to school his voice into a jest, “Or have I found a cohort?”</p><p>She pursed her lips again.  “Associate.”</p><p>“Accomplice.”  He leaned back in the chair, and her eyes raked down his body. </p><p>He preened at the attention.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>: noting or pertaining to a person who criticizes, judges, or gives advice outside the area of his or her expertise</p><p>In this case, these two hurtling so far beyond their respective understandings, in several separate ways.</p><p>Gently NSFW, 18+.</p><p>Continues from chapters prior.  More G'raha/WoL, G'raha POV mostly.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>☽ ✧ ☾</p><p> </p><p>The linkpearl clicked off in a crisp spit of static, and G’raha was left alone in the chair, striving someway to settle himself.</p><p>Meanwhile, Samantha snatched a handful of clothes from the closet and disappeared behind the open door, hiding behind the cranny made between wall and bent hinges.  There was the sound of fabric being shook out, slipped on, limbs and body shifting, and her husky voice after. </p><p>“Raha.”</p><p>Gods help him, merely his name in her mouth made him see red.  He swallowed hard against the heat that pooled downward.  “At attention.”</p><p>She stepped from behind the makeshift partition, dressed in claret blouse and black stockings and her knees-long chemise.  Her top buttoned up, all the way to her neck, she spread her arms and tipped her chin to better expose her throat.  “Can you tell—what Y’shtola spotted?”</p><p><em>Gods, yes</em>—the place marked accidentally by his teeth.  Twelve, but he <em>loved it; </em>the thought of her wearing that badge for all to witness.  His trousers seemed too small.  He coughed.  “If your goal was to conceal the aforementioned,” he said, tail lashing, “You have not succeeded.”</p><p>She sighed and met his eyes—and he knew at once that she realized he was <em>excited.  </em>Her mouth twitched to one side.  “G’raha Tia,” his full moniker was a bad sign.  “What did I say about spoiling—”</p><p>“Nothing is spoilt,” he insisted.  He sat straight up, his back stiffened; winced at the shift in his pants.  One ear flicked as he leaned over his thighs.  “Do you have a higher collar?”</p><p>She pursed her lips for a moment in suspicion, then marched back toward the closet.  He watched as she dug through the shallow alcove of attire—rifled the garments along a lone shelf—knelt, exasperated, to a trunk on the floor.  Heavy latches snapped open.  She grumbled as she plunged both hands into the gaping maw.  A whispered hiss.  “You had to bite me.”</p><p>He flushed deeply, cast back to last evening, wrung spent by her hand.  He cleared his throat.  “It was unintentional, I assure you,” he muttered.  “I was—ah—rather preoccupied.”</p><p>She was furiously unbuttoning, shrugging off one blouse to make room for another.  “True,” she admitted, and he tried not to study the line of her back through the thin fabric of her chemise; how it might feel to run lips along her nape.  She swept her drying hair forward to position the new black lapels—this neckline, indeed, up-frilled and modest.  A glance over her shoulder as she hefted from the floor.  “You’re staring.”</p><p>Heat found his neck and his pelvis.  He watched as she draped her long legs with layered skirts, and quirked one brow, defiant.  “Making useful observations, I thank you.”  He steepled fingers under his chin and flicked his ears forward.</p><p>Samantha snorted and grinned, and he thrilled, as always, to amuse her.  “Ridiculous.”  She shook her head and stretched her sleeves down—dug through her dirty things from before for half-gloves and focuses.  “Haven’t you more of Allag to remember?  That seems far more pressing.”</p><p>The corner of his lips curled in a half-smirk.  “But a case of recollection, not research.”  He felt his blush in his nose, and knew he must be ruddy.  “The former for Allag,” he admitted.  “The latter to serve my own dastardly plans.”</p><p>Her skirts made hushed sounds as she meandered toward him, lacing the front of her bodice.  “As your field partner,” and she was ruddy, too, “I have some license to your findings.”</p><p>His heartbeat in his groin again.  He let his thighs spread slightly, finding her stare through his lashes.  “Do mine ears deceive,” he tried to school his voice into a jest, “Or have I found a cohort?”</p><p>She pursed her lips again.  “Associate.”</p><p>“Accomplice.”  He leaned back in the chair, and her eyes raked down his body. </p><p>He preened at the attention.</p><p>“Next time,” she muttered, leering vaguely, “I get to do more of the biting.”</p><p>His mute gasp gave way to a very fierce smile. </p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Samantha dragged G’raha to the entrance by hand; tried to sidestep Tataru’s glance of question—the probing stare of accusation from Thancred.  “Rushing back afield already?”</p><p>She was grappling her feathered quarterstaff from its spot at the rack.  “Cid rang by linkpearl,” she said, as G’raha strapped his bow and quiver in place along his back.  “Duty calls, yet again.”</p><p>Thancred watched the two of them with something doubtful in his eyes—the squinting, details-oriented scrutiny of a spy.  “So you say.”</p><p>G’raha stepped from the wall to allow himself clearance and hinged at the waist in genuflection.  “My thanks to you, Thancred Waters of the Scions, for the most magnificent omelette of my life.”  He peeked up through the veil of his long copper fringe.  “Favors and gratuity forthcoming.”</p><p>Thancred blinked down in confusion, and G’raha’s hand was in Samantha’s again, and she was calling back brightly.  “See you soon!”</p><p>And the archway was passing above them, Mor Dhona lying in wait.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>The slant of crystal was rock on her spine, her staff a taut line down her back, but she was distracted by his mouth.</p><p>They were well ahead of their fellows, G’raha’s hands curled to hook at her knees, the rut of his hips mounting her to the spire.  A puff of air left her.  “We have to focus,” she panted, reaching for another kiss all the same.</p><p>His teeth dragged her lip; a path of hot breath to her earlobe.  “Focus,” he grunted.  “You say that, but—” He dropped one of her knees to reach between them.  His glance of question met with acquiescence, he stroked the meet of her thighs and she bucked up against him.</p><p>She sucked in air and exhaled.  “The others are coming.”  Still, she crooked her leg to offer better access; threw back her head at the cup of his palm against skirt and pantalettes. </p><p>He was breathing so hard the motion was shaking them both.  His touch was gone, replaced by the ridge in his trousers.  “Cid and Rammbroes—and Unei and Doga, forgive me,” he hissed, grinding them together with a thrust.  “But I despise the bloody Tower right now.”</p><p>She laughed, hoarse and breathy—both hands at his shoulders to gently press him back.  “That’s a lie.”</p><p>He groaned because she was right; settled back on his heels and huffed and pouted.  “True,” he grumbled.  He readjusted his doublet and tried not to sink with the weight of the knowledge, with the certainty descending every moment of his life:</p><p>His fate was tied with the Tower, try to deny it though he might.</p><p> </p><p>☽ ✧ ☾</p><hr/><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Another abrupt ending.  Almost missed submitting this one in time!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Prompt #12: Tooth and Nail (G'raha Tia/WoL)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>She trembled.  Curled further.  “Your mouth,” came the quiet confession.  “I—can’t stop thinking about it.”</p><p>Deafening static was back in his ears.  The mouth in question malfunctioned, twice before he could wrangle a sound.  “Ah.”</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>: with all one's resources or energy; fiercely</p><p>NSFW, 18+. YES EXTREMELY.</p><p>G'raha/WoL, G'raha POV.  Basically continues from chapters prior.</p><p>CT story referenced.  Gentle unwanted jealousy.  All kinds of oral sex.  Mild come eating.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>☽ ✧ ☾</p><p> </p><p>G’raha plummeted in anguish, palm pressed across his right eye.</p><p>His knees struck the floor.  Pain.  Searing memory, scintillating, distant. </p><p>The portal was split.  Samantha crumpled beside him.  Unei and Doga were torn to the air before either could rise—Warrior or admirer—and when the hero struggled to her feet, Samantha’s shriek was guttural, garbled.  Grappled hand-to-hand with a voidsent, Cid’s was sharp with indignation. </p><p>
  <em>“Nero!”</em>
</p><p>The space around them warped with churning aether.  Scaeva’s shout was silenced, swallowed up into oblivion.  Darkness roared against the sky, disappearing in on itself in gruesome, weeping undulations.</p><p>Eerie twilight returned to shroud the Tower, golden and glittering—and they were gone.  All three; the final descendants of Allag, and the defector Tribunus Laticlavius alongside.</p><p>Lifetimes later, worlds and disparate destinies aside, G’raha perfectly recalled the way she recounted the Echo.  Xande, the second-lived monarch.  The king who knew death, but escaped it.  Alive again, he was consumed with wrath and terror; engulfed in desolation, his bedlam complete and unending.  Let the world be devoured, then, same as him.  Let darkness swallow all, even hope itself.</p><p>
  <em>If man has nothing, he need not know the pain of loss.</em>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>They limped back to Saint Coinach’s, the sun descending in the sky.</p><p>G’raha’s eye spiked with pressure as he braced an arm around Garlond, easing him through the descent.  Samantha ranted, listing components for healing.  “There should be plenty at camp,” she decided.  “And we need respite, but—” she winced through her own twinges, talking chiefly to herself.  “Why in the hells is this <em>always how it turns out?”</em>  Her hair was undone, sleeves torn and singed, a smear of ash on her brow.  She scowled at the ground and shuffled faster, staff held out like a talisman.</p><p>“Stay tonight,” Cid offered.  “We can set up the tent—and you skip half the trip back.  Though,” and he laughed thinly, surely to remember, “That means you two are stuck together like before.”</p><p>She snorted and peered over her shoulder.  <em>What torture.</em>  But he wondered if she remembered it, too; those first days of halcyon summer, winding and circuitous.  How did they manage—mapping the Labyrinth, past instinctive griping and distraction, both stubborn scholars denying their attraction?  “I don’t mind,” she muttered.  “So long as G’raha feels the same.”</p><p>A glance to him for consent—</p><p>
  <em>Or maybe confession?</em>
</p><p>His nod was curt and professional.  The motion stirred pain in his temple.  “The more we recuperate, the better.”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>It took time to make camp—to wash the firsts of the shock from their systems, not to mention the blood and the sweat.</p><p>When most of the Sons were abed, Samantha pulled him and Garlond aside.  The elixir she brewed was sweet above bitter, and G’raha wondered which flavor was aether, and if it varied between them—if perhaps, for her or Cid, the taste was distinctive.  “My mother taught me this one,” she explained, feeling his curious interest.  “The blend and the enchantment.  It should reach full effect overnight.”</p><p>G’raha was partial to stories of her mother, vague and obfuscated though she kept them.  “Thank you.”  The dull throb in his eye was already fading, the ache in his sinus placated.</p><p>Garlond pressed his lips to the edge of his phial and stared at the horizon, eyes flat with concentration.  “Sleep will prove a manifold blessing, in that case,” he muttered.  Then he drained the flask.  A deep sigh.  “I’m turning in.”  He forced a smile.  “Try to have a rest.”</p><p>Samantha’s lips twitched up tensely in answer, her eyes full of questions, and as Cid began back toward his end of the encampment, he cupped a palm on her shoulder; gripped her, affectionate.</p><p>What was it she said?</p><p>
  <em>I won’t take us back to the castrum—but you know very well why I would help him.</em>
</p><p>G’raha tried not to watch as she leaned in and whispered.  Cid’s mien was impassive, her face turned from sight.  As G’raha feigned indifference, she hugged the man, stiff and abrupt.  His stoic expression impervious, Cid wrapped her in arms to return the sudden gesture—held her tightly—and then they were parted, him ambling off with a wave, her turning, limned by the sunset, back to G’raha.</p><p>She was wiping tears from her face. </p><p>He pretended not to notice.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>G’raha ducked through the flap to find her curled in her bedroll, tucked as much into a ball as her long body would allow.</p><p>He shed his boots and outer trappings quickly and discreetly, arranging his things in neat piles in his corner.  He shrugged off doublet and tunic; unlatched and unbuckled and slipped loose his trousers, rummaging his rucksack to find a change for sleepwear.</p><p>A glance at the curve of her body.  Still tense and huddled.  He wanted to reach out.  It was unlike him, really, to be so <em>held back.</em>  But then again—</p><p>
  <em>The more I learn of the Crystal Tower, the less I am myself.</em>
</p><p>Smalls shucked and nightpants in place, he waged a war within—between the natural impulse to comfort, and the urge to make it obscene.  Despite pain and grievance, the horrors now seen, above all, his body craved her; still wished, despite context, timing, or location, to take and <em>unmake her.</em></p><p>She made a tiny, plaintive sound. </p><p>It took him far too long to realize it was <em>Raha.</em></p><p>His mind went blank.  Without thinking, he was behind her; smaller, but curved to her frame.  “Here,” his croaked breath, and her tension eased at the contact, her weight sinking against him, her palms finding the forearms wrapped around her.  She sighed so hard he could feel her deflate. </p><p>“I want to tell you something,” she breathed.  “Before I lose the courage to say it.”</p><p>His heart was already pounding.  He felt it behind his right eye.  “Anything.”</p><p>A stiff inhalation.  Weakly.  “It’s—” another noise, of shame, of disgrace.  “Awful.”</p><p>He hugged her; stretched to press lips to her nape, as he dreamt of that morning.  “I doubt that.”</p><p>She trembled.  Curled further.  “Your mouth,” came the quiet confession.  “I—can’t stop thinking about it.”</p><p>Deafening static was back in his ears.  The mouth in question malfunctioned, twice before he could wrangle a sound.  “Ah.”</p><p>Her shiver.  “After everything that happened,” and he could hear hatred, self-loathing in her voice, “The throne room, the voidgate, our companions falling in—all I can imagine, still, is—”</p><p>The space between her and the canvas was cramped, but she shifted over to face him.  His eyes were wide, and he wondered how much of a schoolboy he looked—how foolish, how insipid.  She was wriggling free of the blankets and reaching, and then their limbs were entangled, her hips pressed to his. </p><p>Her hands dragged down his backbone, down to the base of his tail.  He arched as she stroked to his shoulders, his body painfully excited.  “The others might hear us,” he whispered to her ear.</p><p>She wet her lips and moved to kiss him.  “Not if we stay quiet.”</p><p>A simple concept.  A crusade. </p><p>For every time he touched her, he felt he needed to bellow.</p><p>Snaked together over the bedroll, arms and legs entwined, they kissed, soul-rich.  Overwarm bodies struggled for contact, starving to combine.  His hand quested under her nightgown, up between her thighs, and when he found what he hunted, he sucked a hard breath. </p><p>“Are you not wearing—”</p><p>She lurched into his hand.  His fingers met wiry curls and velvet slickness.  Mouth fallen open in a gasp, he stroked those unseen lips, her body flushed so hot it warmed the air around them.</p><p>Had he died, somehow, and not remembered? </p><p>Her nose tickled his.  “I was—” her voice cracked, even in a whisper.  “Hoping you might touch me.”</p><p>He was so swollen-hard it was physical anguish—redoubled from aching before.  “I want to touch you all over,” he panted.  He took her mouth in his teeth and caressed in exploration.  The pads of his middlemost fingers found a place that, when he prodded, she swallowed a shout.</p><p>
  <em>There.  </em>
</p><p>He swirled and nudged, timid; slipped one finger half-in, and—</p><p>She hissed in his ear.  “Raha—”</p><p>A throb in his cock.  <em>Gods, </em>but she gripped him so <em>tightly—</em>two knuckles, curled thither.  “Is it—” a challenge, truly, to whisper, “—alright?”</p><p>Her knee was propped against his hip and she trembled, nodding minutely.</p><p>A pause.  And then he dragged his fingers back to slowly push them further in—to <em>pretend—</em>and as her body tensed around him, for one moment of dazzling panic, he wondered if his width would even <em>fit.</em></p><p>
  <em>If she ever allowed him to do that.</em>
</p><p>How would she <em>feel,</em> her soft, taut warmth <em>taking him in</em>—hugging and squeezing and—</p><p>A moan on his lips.  He could ask.  Could roll overhead and push down his waistband and show her how swollen, how heavy; coax the tip of his cock there instead—<em>let her feel what she did to him—</em></p><p>He brushed his thumb over her clit.  “I want to make you come,” he breathed.  “Like you did for me.”</p><p>She spread her thighs wide.  “Kiss me, then,” she said, and for one split moment of question, he wondered which she meant.</p><p>Wondered, and made a decision.</p><p>He heard her swallow the cry as he took her knee in hand—dove down and looked up the line of her body, finding nervous eyes.  He wet his lips and watched until she nodded, her lip held between her teeth.</p><p>And then he was kissing, nose in tight curls, mouth full of musk and silk.  <em>Twelve in heaven.</em>  He used his tongue to tease the place that fluttered; the gate that he wanted to swallow him up.</p><p>He gave her his fingers, instead.</p><p>G’raha tried to hush the clamor as he sucked.  His licking tongue and hunting touches drew out wet whispers.  And she was tensing on his knuckles, underneath his bracing hand—and he would not stop.  He closed his eyes—plunge, lick the cusp, suck the bud, stroke within—</p><p>Her legs trembled, vicious.  She tried to stop herself from writhing; threw her head into the bedroll to stifle her gasps.  His cock was so hard he was lightheaded, the crotch of his pants vaguely damp.</p><p>Throat too dry to speak, she took his head in both hands.  Her thumbs raked his ears.  It was a monumental task not to groan.  G’raha surfaced at her urging; sucked his pruned fingers, hungry for every last trace.  Her lips were open, pupils blown wide, dark eyes black with awe as he licked his hand clean.  Her rasp.  “You didn’t have to—”</p><p>“I wanted.”  Something nauseous tugged his navel.  His brow knitted.  He reached to kiss her.  “I want to—” Her hand pushed under the front of his waistband and he almost yelped. </p><p>“Lie back,” she breathed to his lips, both mouths full of her flavor.</p><p>He did as he was told, watching, wide-eyed, in the darkness—and then he was freed of his nightpants, her hands pulling them down, her mouth a silent gasp at the sight.  With the ambient glow of Saint Coinach’s around them, she had a much better view of him tonight.</p><p>Her lips shaped <em>Raha,</em> and he had never been so aroused.</p><p>That is, until she crept down his body, and touched him with her mouth.</p><p>The head of his cock looked profane by her lips—something from only his rudest imaginings.  But she was wrapping it inside them, swallowing tip to middle.  He arched into the bedroll to stop himself from thrusting—to simply watch, lightheaded, as she lavished her attention, tongue along the belly of his shaft, working down to close her throat in a flutter around him.</p><p>He came so hard there were pinpricks in his vision.  He came, and he <em>came,</em> and she swallowed every onze. </p><p>She sucked him dry.  It was a colossal endeavor not to loose a battle cry.</p><p>Her hand on his softening flesh, she licked spit and spend from her mouth and he could not look away—could not, would not forget the languid look on her face as she crawled over him, lips dark and swollen from his width.  He strained his neck to kiss her; to know his bitterness, painting her tongue.  “Gods,” he told her skin.  “You hardly had to, either.”</p><p>She sucked his bottom lip and he felt teeth.  “I wanted.”</p><p>He was dizzy with devotion, boldness overblown at the taste of himself in her mouth. </p><p>“I want even more,” he told her, toiling to stay quiet.</p><p>She sank her weight upon him and reached to comb back his fringe, fingertips brushing his ears.  He tipped into the contact, eyes locked with hers all the time.  “Back in Silvertear,” she said.</p><p>To him, it sounded like a vow.</p><p> </p><p>☽ ✧ ☾</p>
<hr/><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. Prompt #13: Sin (G'raha Tia/WoL)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>It blurs together. </p><p>In Norvrandt, she has nightmares whenever she sleeps.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>: transgression of divine law<br/>: to commit a sinful act; to perform sinfully<br/>: any act regarded as such a transgression, especially a willful or deliberate violation of some religious or moral principle</p><p>I'm a sucker for parallels.</p><p>G'raha/WoL, mainly WoL POV. Dreams. Dark fantasy imagery and violence.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>☽ ✧ ☾</p><p> </p><p>Lifetimes later, the Light inside her stirs fever dreams.</p><p>He watches through the Tower; holds a fist to his mouth and braces through her screams.  There are tears on his face, but he will not break counsel.  He cannot intervene.  Though she deserves to know—</p><p>
  <em>There are things we can ill afford to lose.</em>
</p><p>… But is her sanity not among them?  Her inviolable soul?</p><p>He watches, and waits, and wipes salt from his face.</p><p>She does not realize.  She does not know.</p><p>But should she wish it—should she seek—</p><p>She could swallow him whole.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p>✧ ☄ ☽</p><p> </p><p>It blurs together. </p><p>In Norvrandt, she has nightmares whenever she sleeps.</p><p>Few evenings the hell-visions vanish, leaving her to dream, and each time she closes her eyelids, the Light blooms behind them like mirages.  Blinding blazes of aether; flashes burned in a permanent glare—</p><p>White roses bloom in her hair.  She smells ceruleum, oil and smoke in the air.  A third eye opens on her brow, and moisture wells into her mouth.  She is starving.  Her talons cleave wounds into the ground, for it is soft there, and sweet—full of life and breathing aether, on which she means to feast.  Something glitters in the distance, azure and pristine.  She wants to know if she can eat it.</p><p>
  <em>Savage beast.</em>
</p><p>She stirs up loam and shallow graves.  Air grows snow-cold.</p><p>Twilight descends, and fingers reach to grasp through putrefaction—ten made of freezing, ten made of heat.</p><p><em>No.</em>  Brow furrowed.  Shadow, and—gemstone?</p><p>Her wings beat.</p><p>
  <em>Samantha.</em>
</p><p>Her mouth is white ash. </p><p>She knows him—has known all along—</p><p>
  <em>Hearken to me.</em>
</p><p>Laughter beneath. </p><p>
  <em>Dear hero—you would pick <strong>that </strong>over eternity?</em>
</p><p>Jewel-bright fingers grasp her wrist. </p><p>
  <em>Stay with me, Samantha.  Focus on my voice—</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>—let expanse contract </em>
</p><p>    the stars, the moon, the sun—</p><p>—<em>eon become instant</em></p><p>    bright crescent, blinding comet, bullion stardust—</p><p>
  <em>— throw wide the gates</em>
</p><p>    in celestial symmetry—</p><p>
  <em>—the dossal of the tower</em>
</p><p>    <em>all </em></p><p>        for</p><p>               her</p><p>             to</p><p> </p><p>to</p><p> </p><p>… it feels cool</p><p>       the blue stone of his hand</p><p>   </p><p>    but back then</p><p>he was warm</p><p> </p><p>back</p><p>    then</p><p> </p><p>        he meant something</p><p> </p><p>    beautiful</p><p>to me.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Crusts in her eyes.  The window slides into focus. </p><p>Stars twinkle over the Crystarium.</p><p>
  <em>That dream.</em>
</p><p>… how long was she asleep?</p><p>She sits slowly.  Her eyes feel like deserts, hot tears on her cheeks.</p><p>Her mind begins to think of Mor Dhona.  She lets memory slip through the sieve.</p><p>Something breathes out of the room, then. </p><p>Something solemn, but relieved.</p><p> </p><p>☾ ☄ ✧</p>
<hr/><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>barely made it, barely made it</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0015"><h2>15. Prompt #14: Part (G'raha Tia/WoL)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Despite what they had shared, she felt apart.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>: a portion or division of a whole that is separate or distinct<br/>: piece, fragment, fraction, or section; constituent<br/>: an essential or integral attribute or quality<br/>: to divide (a thing) into parts<br/>: to be or become divided; break or cleave<br/>: to go or come apart; separate, as two or more things</p><p>5.0 spoilers.  G'raha/WoL, WoL POV.</p><p>References to scenes just before and after Mt. Gulg.  Some prose here has been borrowed from my experimental <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25964395/chapters/63117286">heatfic AU</a> for Sam and G'raha.  Italicized quotes at the beginning, middle, and end are all indeed canon from G'raha.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>✧</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Yes.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Something has come back to me. </em>
</p>
<hr/><p>✧ ☄ ☽</p><p> </p><p>“Well, yes,” he laughed, and the sound washed over her, balmy as the summer breeze.  She scowled, against the wind and gusty scholar.  “But what you mention is merely one element—”</p><p>“A <em>critical piece.”</em>  She licked and swiped her finger on her bodice to cleanse it of ash—ignored the blustering glance from her companion—and prodded the crinkly parchment.  She might not know the ins and outs of Allagan relics, specifically, but— “The sum can’t be seen without cracking the <em>parts.”</em></p><p>A quirk of his lips.  A dimple, briefly, in his freckled cheek.  “Perhaps,” he conceded.  “But what if I told you,” his shite-eating grin reappeared, “That the sum, my new friend, <em>is the key?”</em></p><p>When G’raha Tia smiled, he showed every one of his teeth—sharp canines and incisors.  His tail flicked and curled like a conjuring cane behind him, ears pricked forward, resembling a jovial … <em>beast.</em></p><p>Why were Seekers so <em>like that?</em></p><p>Samantha frowned.  “Listen.”  She tried to adjust her tone, her <em>delivery,</em> because for all the bloody nuisance of their inauspicious introduction, she frankly, genuinely—hated to admit that she—<em>liked him.</em>  “I’m here for one end and one reason, which is to clear the foul air of that primeval mausoleum.”  She crossed her arms.  “Tell me what I need to know before I make some sort of buffoon of myself.”</p><p>He aimed a puff of breath to shift the forelock from his brow, glancing up at her again.  Odd-eyed, teal-green, ruby-red scarlet.  Long copper lashes.  Overfull lips.  That damnable stardust of freckles.</p><p>She pursed her mouth and squinted. </p><p>
  <em>Too pretty. </em>
</p><p>“Here.”  He pointed to the unintelligible legend.  “Mark the cypher and tell me what you see.”</p><p> </p><p>✧ ✧ ✧</p><p> </p><p>Before or even after, she never met someone like <em>Raha—</em>young historiographer crammed full of figures, buoyant braggart brimming with <em>life.  </em>He was mirth and mischief distilled, cunning cut with pure kindness.  To his misbehavior she brought her procedures, gloom to his teeming delight.  But the first time they spoke was like basking in daylight; balmy sunshine melting chills of ice.  Warm but cool around the edges, brilliant like crystal, from almost the moment he opened his mouth …</p><p>She hung on every word.  Kept it hidden. </p><p>Thought he saw through her, regardless.  <em>Did he not?</em></p><p>Red eyes pierced to the core of her spirit, and despite what they had shared, she felt … <em>apart.</em></p><p>Wanting him was peril, a danger to her heart. </p><p> </p><p>✧</p>
<hr/><p>
  <em>But we need not speak of these things now.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>It was not my place to keep you.</em>
</p>
<hr/><p>✧</p><p> </p><p>The sandwiches eaten long ago, she kept the basket.</p><p>Kept it for holding old letters, opened envelopes, cuttings of violet flowers.  Kept it to remember the Exarch’s first gift.  Kept it, perhaps, to atone for forgetting—or because she knew from the start it was <em>him.</em> </p><p>Light toast infused with butter.  Hard cheese and tomato.  Eggs over hard—the way she liked them—with a touch of dill and basil, olive oil and lemon, black pepper and spicy dark greens.</p><p>It tasted of a summer in Mor Dhona she remembered like a dream; like hands she loved, with her fingers woven between.</p><p>The panorama of her vision trembled.  The frame of the Crystarium window wobbled with the water in her eyes.  In her tantrum, a planter had shattered.  She bent to pick up scattered potsherds, roots and soil a mess at her knees.  Fat purple blossoms littered the room, all shades of Lakeland, all different, all taken.</p><p>She was shaking.  Hair once dark, now bleached starlight, fluttered in her periphery like white shadows.  The weave of the basket pricked her fingers and she swallowed bile.  The whole time—</p><p>
  <em>I knew, I knew, I knew—</em>
</p><p>Blinded by the sparkle of the Tower.  Baffled by the bright jungle around him.</p><p>His basket filled with cracked stems and dirtied petals, her vision blurred again.  Dragged into illumination, this light-doomed charade—Hydaelyn’s champion forced to the stage—sick, to be cast in this farce of a limelight; role decided, strings plucked and knotted marionette-tight—</p><p>Their puppet of Night.</p><p>The Crystal Exarch.</p><p>
  <em>Emet-Selch.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Keep friends close, and devils closer.</em>
</p><p>But which was which? </p><p>… What had the Ascian said?</p><p>
  <em>Not that you would remember any of this.</em>
</p><p>… <em>A paltry way to end a chapter, I concede.</em></p><p>Hands raked her scalp.  Her own, though they felt ghostly—apart from her flesh.</p><p>
  <em>Thank you for fighting for this world.  For believing.</em>
</p><p>She tasted copper.</p><p>
  <em>Worry not.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Whatever should become of me, I will be happy and free, safe in the knowledge that I have played my part.</em>
</p><p>Something raw left her mouth.</p><p>It took her far too long to realize it was—</p><p>
  <em>Raha.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Reckless, confident Raha.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>☾ ☄ ✧</p>
<hr/><p>
  <em>Fare you well, my friend.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>My inspiration.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>✧</p>
<hr/><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>barely again, barely again</p><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85Z3iwpFQeg">This song</a> helped inspire this chapter! Big WoL @ Emet and/or Exarch feels.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0016"><h2>16. Prompt #15: Ache (G'raha Tia/WoL)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>An image fondly rendered.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>G'raha/WoL, WoL POV followed by G'raha POV.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>✧ ☄ ☽</p><p> </p><p>Moonlight streamed in through the tent flap.</p><p>The glow cast a line on his face, penumbral white, high relief.  She tried to count his freckles; to map the blotchy red that stained his cheeks.  He was already asleep.  Always the heavier sleeper, despite his own struggles with dreams.</p><p>Even years that felt like full lifetimes later, she could perfectly remember his features.  The curl of his lashes, red-auburn and copper.  The set of his lips, relaxed and inviting.  The frame of his face, a perfect, squared heart, boyish and brimming with pluck.  Pert nose like a button, curved lacrimal markings, soft fringe of hair like a veil<em>—</em></p><p>She never planned to memorize him. </p><p>But then, she never planned to fall in love with him, either.</p><p>After Raphael, she swore she would be careful; never lose herself again, never be swept up in aching.  But that night in Saint Coinach's, dull rushing filled her ears.  Her own blood, rising to drown her; idle daydreams transformed into something hazard-riddled. </p><p>G'raha was different, certainly, yes.  But that overwhelmed her.</p><p>For what was this but some new danger?  Love seemed, to her, like a figment of fiction; a fairy-tale wish, never truly existing.  There was no time for love amid the fussing and fighting.  No time, for the hero, for mortal delights.</p><p>No time, no time.</p><p>No time for this.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p>☽ ✧ ☾</p><p> </p><p>Light, everlasting, pressed at cracks in the shutters.</p><p>A golden slant limned her face, and she scowled against it; her scowl, an image fondly rendered.</p><p>He watched her through the scrying glass, <em>more than merely a memory, </em>and his heart pressed at the fracture between stone and flesh, hammering his half-Spoken ribcage.</p><p>
  <em>She is here.  So near.  Close enough to touch and yet I—</em>
</p><p>He balled his crystalline fist into robes.  Her name rushed to his lips to be spoken. </p><p>He swallowed it instead.</p><p> </p><p>✧</p>
<hr/><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>barely</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0017"><h2>17. Prompt #16: Lucubration (Estinien/WoL/Aymeric, +)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>5.3 spoilers.</p><p>Aymeric’s breathy laugh again.  “I am a connoisseur of obstinance,” he professed.  “As she is of arcana."</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Ishgard Sandwich plus one fresh ingredient.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>✧ ☄ ☽</p><p> </p><p>The Manor is wintry at night.</p><p>Wintrier still as she slips like a phantom from bed, dodging fast-grasping fingers. </p><p>Samantha laughs soundlessly at the grunt of gruff disapproval; leans back over the warm lump in the blankets.  A right hand, a mite overlarge, flexes toward her in the darkness.  She takes the outstretched limb like a burnt offering.  Her thumb smoothes along the marred textures of calluses and scars, whorls of scales, soft lamella she knows is coal-black.  She traces him knuckle to cuticle; touches the curves of thick, tapered claws.  It is so dim in the chamber that the only glow comes from her hair, pale and alien, that last bit of affliction borne from Norvrandt.  "Sleep," she whispers, and the demon grunts again.  "I need to have a snack."</p><p>There is a flicker along the arcane thread between them; crimson, spun aurum, bright violet.  Past that bond of the Eyes, forged from the gifts of those brothers, his aether thrums, quicksilver.  Clawed fingers twitch around her hand.  The Warrior bends; touches lips to wyrmskin.  The tips of long, pointed nails graze her neck, and he sighs.  It is a soft sound, rough around the edges.  His true nature.  "Tell Borel to come back to bed."</p><p>She smiles.  He combs through her hair.  His altered hand is overwarm, like embers stir within.  "I will."  She kisses his palm and returns it to him.  A snuffling huff. </p><p>Waxless and wickless, mollified for now.</p><p>Her nightgown slides down along her legs like warmed cobwebs, hovering over the floor.  No need for a candle to guide her.  She knows this room better than the pulse of her existence.</p><p>The door slips shut.  The hall is colder than the chamber, warmed as it is by the dragon.  She shivers; reaches for the astral aspect, just a mote of it to warm her.  She starts down the stairs as hot aether strokes up her spine, defrosting the length of her backbone.</p><p>Her stomach growls, but as she reaches the vestibule landing, she hears conversation from the parlor.  It distracts her, warm and gentle, radiant as a hearth.</p><p>A breathy chuckle; soft, dark velvet.  A pause of contemplation, and an answering murmur, low and crisp and rich.</p><p>She blinks through the haze of half-sleep and waking. </p><p>
  <em>A guest?</em>
</p><p>"Mm, indeed," the one that thawed her heart.  “My father Borel—or rather his beloved prior—was something of a collector.”  The scrape of a teacup.  “My <em>Maman </em>began the inventory; endeavored to identify the pieces, I believe, to the best of her skill and capability.  At my hapless urging, I confess, Samantha continues the venture; bears the torch alone, much though I have insisted on further assistance.”</p><p>Her shoulder brushes the wall as she creeps nearer, her blood stilled to listen. </p><p>“Why am I not surprised,” a second voice, and her heart is in her throat—<em>what time is it again?</em>  A laugh that reminds her of earliest autumn.  “Stubborn and scowling seemed ever her preference back then.”</p><p>Aymeric’s breathy laugh again.  “I am a connoisseur of obstinance,” he professed.  “As she is of arcana."</p><p>“You learned soon on, then, her fondness for arcane artifacts?”</p><p>“But how could I not?” and she can hear the smile in his tone; feel the warmth even through walls of stone and Ishgardian darkness, where the Bringer of Night slows and falters.  “Though for my part the understanding was—” Aymeric hums then, embarrassed.  “Less hands-on, more … investigation, remote.”</p><p>She can tell the other wants to laugh, overloud.  But to his credit, he stifles it.  “I can strongly relate.  No doubt she told you the truth of my—” and her mind's eye <em>sees </em>his cheeks ruddy; knows the way his nose pinks and reddens to clash with his hair.  “That is to say—during the Calamity, resources were scarce.  I found myself resorting to what some might refer to as <em>more </em><em>desperate measures.”</em></p><p>A sound of serene agreement.  “Pulverizing padlocks in the Manor Fortemps, if I recall correctly.”</p><p>A cough, half choke, half bark.  “That very thing.”  Another teacup scraping.  “And I will have you know it pained me,” he insists, though she can hear the shame ascending, “To engage in vandalism and defacement in pursuit of the history gained.”</p><p>“Is that so?”  There is a wicked grin in Aymeric’s voice.  “I had heard you were something of a miscreant.”</p><p>It gives her a sick sort of pleasure to hear him stutter again.  Secondhand embarrassment, yes, but—<em>enjoy the bite of that Borelian sarcasm—</em> “To <em>troublemaking,</em> I will accede.  But treachery—never.”  A pause.  A pause, overlong.  “I never wished to play villain, at least.”</p><p>“Another cup?”</p><p>A grunt of acquiescence.  Tea being poured through a heartbeat of silence.</p><p>“Her tales gave me a sketch,” and it is Aymeric’s voice, again, that rumbles.  “A vision warmly rendered.  But despite the charm and vibrance of that depiction, I can hardly liken it to knowing the subject directly.”</p><p>She has reached the edge of the doorframe, now.  She knows Aymeric looks at him—traces and pins him with eyes every shade of midwinter, ice and starlight and diamonds.</p><p>How does it feel, to <em>him,</em> to withstand it?</p><p>The second voice is very quiet.</p><p>“Practical examination.”  And quieter, yet.  “She would bitterly berate me for saying it, but—I will never know why I was thus blessed.  Why, in truth, I was given this undeserved gift.”</p><p>And there is a stillness again, a hush filled with static.  She can almost imagine the look on his face—Aymeric, sternly bewildered.  “Your worth—your <em>deserving—</em>was never in question.”  A rustling of shadows past the tongue of the Commander.  “For the time you have given—the love, and I daresay <em>heart’s blood</em>—<em>” A</em> teacup nestles into a saucer and she knows he has reached for him; knows Aymeric is touching him, some way, somehow.  “Doubt not that you are deserving.”</p><p>A gravid calm.</p><p>It stretches.</p><p>“Thank you, Lord Speaker.”</p><p>Perhaps he squeezes his shoulder.  “I should say the same, Lord Exarch of the Tower.”  Perhaps he is granted a grin.  “And if you wish,” Borel murmurs, “I would prefer to be a friend.”</p><p> </p><p>☾ ☄ ✧</p><hr/><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>unedited.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0018"><h2>18. Prompt #17: Fade (G'raha Tia/WoL, Emet-Selch/WoL)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The issue with memory is that it tends to fade.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>5.3 spoilers.  Shameless use of in-game dialogue.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>✧ ☄ ☽</p><p> </p><p>The issue with memory is that it tends to fade.</p><p>This is of course a natural process.  Objects disappear into the distance just as recollection blurs around the edges—mountains, once crisp, and close, and green, fade to blue haze as they slide beyond the horizon.</p><p>To say she suffered from amnesia, then, was incorrect. </p><p>She never <em>forgot.</em></p><p>She merely <em>refused to remember.</em></p><p>Sharp bits of bitter reminiscence were dulled due to time, that inexorable expanse.  But time affected her memory far less than the manner she fought to suppress it—the way she pushed him from her mind.</p><p>
  <em>Out of sight.</em>
</p><p>To fade.  To dim and dwindle.</p><p>Dissolution, vanishment, waning, darkening, withered.</p><p>It hurt to deny what existed.  Hurt worse to admit it.  A bone deep pain; a grief, frail and distant.</p><p>He was not <em>dead.</em></p><p>But he was <em>gone,</em> evanescent—fleeting as a season—brief as blood-red blushed across a fallen autumn leaf.  The thought of him curled at the edges, pigment clouded, dampened, inaccurate, absent—</p><p>The issue with time is that it <em>slips away.</em></p><p>One last glimpse of his profile—<em>what did he say—</em>and the doors to the Tower slid shut, gigantic, gargantuan, and in that rushed, colossal wake, Samantha was left with a ribcage ready to break, bones that wobbled and quaked.</p><p>
  <em>Not that you would remember any of this.</em>
</p><p>Ambivalent tenor gone dark.</p><p>
  <em>Remember.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>We once lived.</em>
</p><p>His aether waned fast into the faint haze of Amaurot.</p><p>She was left with marrow that felt like hot ash.</p><p>Less forgetting long-forgotten pasts.</p><p>
  <em>Steady now, and listen.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>If I were to tell you that this isn't the end—that we will meet again—would you believe me?</em>
</p><p>Recollections blur.  Objects disappear into the distance.</p><p>Crystal, crisp cerulean, brilliant.  Static sentinel, scintillant.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Unchanging—</em>
</p><p> </p><p>She fell to her knees, his soul to her chest.</p><p>The problem with memory is that it tends to fade.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>—Everchanging.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>But no matter how deeply buried they may be, hopes never truly disappear.</p><p>     They are always with us. </p><p>          Guiding us. </p><p>               Driving us.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>I will follow my heart—</p><p>Regardless of the risks.</p><p> </p><p>☽ ✧ ☾</p><p>☄</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0019"><h2>19. Prompt #18: Panglossian (G'raha Tia/WoL)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>5.3 spoilers.</p><p>It pulsed with warmth in a terrible, beautiful, otherworldly way, and as she retrieved it, hand trembling, from its nest, she watched the doors tremor.</p><p>His blood.</p><p>His life.</p><p>Throw wide the gates.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>WoL POV, that one deleted scene.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>✧ ☄ ☽</p><p> </p><p>She ran.</p><p>A chill on her skin, all sound turned to static, she sprinted.</p><p>The Toll was a blur, Silvertear the same.  Tears in her eyes.  Flame in her chest.  Lungs burned, throat pricked.  She tasted metal.  Legs tight and aching, bones feeling strange, breath coming sharp like she was fighting for her life—</p><p>The Find.  Blue crystal around her.  She gasped and scrambled and fell to her knees; shoved herself up by the heels of her palms.  One rose to check the prismatic vessel tucked safe at her breast, sweat on her lips, a film at her neck.  Dry earth tore clean through the shins of her stockings, and she felt the sting of broken flesh, but above the thrum in her ears, the haze in her eyes, nothing mattered.</p><p>Run, run, run.</p><p>Years since.  Small few to Samantha.  Small few to him, in his pool of reminiscence—</p><p>Memories of Allag, embedded in glass.  </p><p>Air tasted bitter and hard as shards of sand.  Small few though they were, in so many years since, she avoided this damnable entrance; anything and everything to <em>pretend to forget.</em>  But now, so near the sprawl of the trench—dwarfed by the stretch of the Tower, those inescapable gates—</p><p>She remembered being struck by the sight; ears ringing, thumped by a strike.  A throttle from Hext, Rhul’s foulest hex, sermons from Waters or Augurelt, perplexed.  She was stunned silent, hardly digesting.  Her eyes tracked the length of those doors from the Exedra, staring, sick-stomached, blindsided.  He watched her swallow bile; listened blankly when she asked him:</p><p>
  <em>Then where is G'raha Tia?</em>
</p><p>Long as she existed, she would never forget the sight, bleached by Light, a washed out daguerreotype, that small—<em>the same height as him—</em>stranger, lifting his hand to his—<em>Spoken, same lips as him—</em>mouth.  The Exarch mused through the split of an instant before—<em>the same voice—</em>his first lie: <em>I am not familiar with that name.  Is there something I should know?</em></p><p>She stumbled.  The Convocation artifact tumbled from her pocket.  She snatched back that glimmer of amber; tucked it there beside him, nestled to her chest.  What had she told him, those weeks, lifetimes, prior?</p><p>
  <em>Something you should know.</em>
</p><p><em>Only everything.  Only the past.  He changed me, I loved him, it ended too fast.</em> </p><p>She kept those secrets buried in her breast, but words spilled out in crumbling shambles.  <em>Mor Dhona—the Toll—the Labyrinth—the Find—Silvertear Falls and the Tower—remember?</em></p><p>His eyes were cast in shadow.  <em>An extraordinary tale.  But I found no such individual residing in the tower when it passed into my care.  Mayhap we can revisit that mystery another time.</em> </p><p>The Dossal Gate was before her—selfsame from that summer long ago.</p><p>
  <em>For now, I think it best that we focus on the present.</em>
</p><p>Heart like hot stone in her throat, palm around the prism imbued with his aether.  It pulsed with warmth in a terrible, beautiful, otherworldly way, and as she retrieved it, hand trembling, from its nest, she watched the doors tremor.</p><p>His blood.</p><p>
  <em>His life.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Throw wide the gates.</em>
</p><p>Fine hairs on her arms and neck prickled.  She stepped across the threshold, ribs aching, heart shaking, shins scraped and bones quaking.  His soul returned to her chest, sweaty palms braced on her bodice, the doors began to groan and close shut, humming electric.</p><p>On reflex, she glanced back.</p><p>Dizzying vertigo overwhelmed her.  She tripped a few paces through the vestibule and wavered, crumpling on the steps.</p><p>Where next?  The Umbilicus?  Places more secret, past scarce few she witnessed?</p><p>Where had he gone, back <em>then—</em>her gasp rang through the vault—<em>then, </em>to slumber?</p><p>Wet heat on her cheeks.  She closed her eyes.  Inhale, exhale.  The sound of air rattled.</p><p>Focus.  Think.  Knowing him, he explored it; mapped the blueprint of his tomb—wandered and marveled and wondered, a scholar, decrypting the crypt to find ledges to rest.  She moved like a specter, inquisitive, distant.  The Tower, then and now and in Norvrandt, were each so very different.  The Exarch favored the Ocular, stowed his secrets in the depths, but G’raha—</p><p>…</p><p>Numb to the world, she ascended.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>The room was suspended in twilight.</p><p>Aurum dusk suffused the chamber, the air itself in stasis.  She gulped a stale breath and fought the squirming in her skin, the chills that made hair stand on end.  Blood thudded her ears, drowning sound—the plod of her boots on the crystal promenade, the infinite murmur of water all around—</p><p>And there—</p><p>At the edge of the plaza—</p><p>Her heart leapt to her throat.  There, cocooned in his bedroll—wrapped in blankets remembered from then—short body curled into one compact comma, elbow bent to cradle his head …</p><p>Something held in the loose cage of his fingers.  A roll of paper.  A letter?</p><p>She was frozen.</p><p>A noiseless croak in her throat.</p><p>
  <em>Raha.</em>
</p><p>She tiptoed closer.  Tiptoed, as though she feared to wake him.</p><p>Everything blurred but for him, white-blue-gold all around.  Only that flash of bright red as she knelt; sank her weight slowly beside him—bent to take him in her stare, scared, and aching, and covetous.</p><p>That face.  That image, fondly rendered.  Those cheeks, sun-touched with freckles—nose rosy—flushed bright as though he—she swallowed a hard, haunted gasp—as though he wended the Fogfens that morning—</p><p>There was a pit pat.  Tears dripped; pooled at the seam of her lips and down past, hot to cold and loose from her chin.  She wiped them fast; stroked the unwelcome glisten from his skin—scowled and combed soft red hair from his forehead, copper, auburn, sunset—forgot how to breathe—touched with one, then both hands—both thumbs by his lips, parenthetical—forehead to forehead, sobbing, sniveling, drowning—<em>oh gods—</em>heart howling past the thrumming pulse of—</p><p>Her hand flung to her chest.</p><p>That which held the shard of him hummed with vibration, energy warbling, thrilling, <em>spilling—</em></p><p>She scrambled it out of her bodice and there to his side, the buzz of aether singing; afraid to stay close, afraid to let go, blood ice, eyes blazing, expression locked into a grimace.  <em>Please, Raha—</em></p><p><em>Trust me, </em>came the echo.</p><p>Dusk in its phases around them.  Ozone crowding her nose.  Though Samantha Rosalyn Floravale was hailed by her blessing of Night, she shivered and was frightened.  She was well-rooted, a hero full-bloomed, blossoms burnt, and faded, and pruned—</p><p>Amid the dim gleam of the ambient crystal, the press of his calluses felt like a kiss. </p><p>Chills prickled through her, so cold that they burned.</p><p>The brush of a thumb with a claw filed down.  A rattle of breath from the ground.  She gripped his wrist to her cheek.  Swallowed saltwater.  Blinked away the blur to find his blood-red eyes.</p><p>When the fire of midsummer faded, ice misting over the horizon, a single leaf turned a shade bright and brash as his hair.  Perhaps they both knew it was another beginning.  His voice was a purr that was hoarse from misuse.  “Am I still asleep?”</p><p>Her face strained, ecstatic.  Something astral licked her backbone.  “No,” the witch whispered.</p><p>His sigh touched her mouth, stale and radiant, potent as a spell.  “What angel wakes me?”</p><p>She wiped her own tears from his face.  “The guardian type.”</p><p>The corners of his lips twisted into a grin, and he smiled.  His thumb on her nape.  “Glad she believed me.”</p><p>Nose to nose, ice and fire.  “As am I."</p><p>☾ ☄ ✧</p><hr/><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0020"><h2>20. Prompt #19: Where the Heart is (Aymeric/WoL, Ishgard Sandwich)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>When nothing made sense, she hied to Ishgard.  While her soul all but smoldered, she plunged into ice.  Winter, restitution, thawing sweetly by his hearth—her favorite arcane transposition.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Short, but sweet.  Musings related to <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/12599668/chapters/28699292">AFUH</a>, Sometime after my WoL returns from Norvrandt, 5.+ patch timeline pre 5.3.  Vague mention of events implied from <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23454640/chapters/56224048">Nightwardens AU</a>, which I think is vaguely absorbing into canon.</p><p>WoL POV.  WoL/Aymeric, + Ishgard Sandwich.  Mention of WoL/G'raha.<br/>My WoL and her paramours are all polyamorous, but mildly possessive.</p><p>This is my comfort zone.  It heals me.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>☾ ☄ ✧</p><p> </p><p>For quite some time after Norvrandt, nothing made sense.</p><p>Dazed.  Drained.  Dazzled by light and truth and shadows.</p><p>When nothing made sense, she hied to Ishgard.  While her soul all but smoldered, she plunged into ice.  Winter, restitution, thawing sweetly by his hearth—her favorite arcane transposition.  At least now she could tell him of G’raha.  At least that lost page, charred and crumpled, was found.  “I loved him,” her leastways confession; penance for her lord Keeper.  Aymeric listened, solemn and sacred, to her voice frail and fragile, her mind a wafer-thin bauble of pain primed to crack. </p><p>Far as she was from the aura of Ryne, her hair was star-white, aetherwarped, faded.  Borel was undaunted as ever.  He raked both hands through her long, washed-out mane, smoothed his palm down her cheek to her nape; took a breath to spit truth and give volume to discomfort.</p><p>“From you, I once withheld someone I cherished.”  His thumb stroked her throat to hook at the base, beautiful face slanted in for a kiss.  “A love that lies deep—nay, deeper still than marrow.”  His heavenly mouth touched the corner of her lips.  “Thus, I would never dare fault you—” the center, “Shall never, now or ever.  But I confess,” and the admission was a whisper, “It twists somewhere tender, rousing raw bestial instinct—some creature compulsion to bare claw and teeth—” and he swallowed, dry and thick then, “—to imagine, past all that has happened, your heart might forget me.”</p><p>His mighty voice, dim and dwindled, bid the fractures inside her to tremble—the stitches, the mends, the patched and then fixed-again fixes— “Aymeric,” she breathed, clambering into his lap; relieved by his greedy embrace.  “How many times must I make you that promise—”</p><p>He held her half-roughly, his lips at her mouth.  “One time more.”  Stiff fingers raked the skin beneath her chemise.  Softer, deeper, weaker, a tone made of shadows.  “Once more, and once again, after.”</p><p>With him, she was smaller, but she mantled over his body—smoothed hands from his jawline, down the plane of his chest; felt the ragged flutter of his heartbeat, the rise and fall of his breath.  Blood and bone, blessed flesh.  “I love you,” she chanted the hymn.  “You were my last dearest wish.”  Both hands combed through his thick raven curls, and he kept her fixed in his attention—pierced through by diamonds.  She shivered.  “After—what I told you,” ashamed that it still pained her to repeat it, “After—that summer, I gave up on dreams … but for this one.”  And she tried to retrieve it.  “A love vast and abiding, bright and blinding as—”</p><p>
  <em>Your eyes.</em>
</p><p>She held his stare and went speechless.  Her voice hitched and died.</p><p>Spellbinding diamond skies—a firmament, boundless and patient.  His hands roamed her backbone and she sighed.  Behind his next murmur, there was a smile.  “’Let my Rose be wild,’” and Samantha blinked down in surprise.  “’And forgive her the brambles—she gets them from mine.’”</p><p>She barked a laugh.  “Did—did my mother say that?”</p><p>He smirked, lopsided.  “’Twould be fair to accuse me of begging a visit.”</p><p>Her heart, a crowd of butterflies.  “You—” She propped both hands on his bare chest, fiddling the dust of sparse black curls there.  A girlish titter on her lips.  “You visited my <em>parents?”</em></p><p>His breathy chuckle.  “Is that not the customary tradition,” and his tapered ears began to pinken, “When one entertains a—certain,” long tips quite red now, “Enduring intimate intention?”</p><p>Not that she was astonished.  Not that it was shocking, in any way, again, to hear it.</p><p>But she was blushing too, her pulse in her neck, taking his perfect jaw in her hands and hunching down to kiss him.  “Twelve bless you, Ser Aymeric de Borel,” and she kissed him again.</p><p>The heat that pulsed from his face only heightened.  “I will have you know such is always my pleasure,” he rumbled.  “And, for a certain yoke of Coerthan orphans, Bryony Floravale and Cassius Magnus happen to—” he pursed his lips in contemplation.  “Fill a <em>parentally aspected chasm.”</em></p><p>She ugly-laughed straight into his mouth.  “Did you take Estinien <em>with you?”</em></p><p>“What do you mean ‘take him?’”  He stared up at her blandly.  “I found him there in the kitchen.”</p><p>Her face would dissolve from all the dizzy-headed grinning.  “Holy hells—<em>of course he—</em>when were you <em>even able—”</em></p><p>“Remarkably often."  He smoothed back her hair; curled a bright ilm on his thumb and brought it to his lips.  It was faintly lambent by his skin.  “The Shroud, I find, agrees with timely manacutter travel.”</p><p>She was shaking her head; pressed their browbones together.  “You dastardly devil.”</p><p>“Monster maleficent.”  He nipped at her lip.  “With magnanimous objectives.”</p><p>She let her flesh be sucked into his mouth and gasped at the touch of his tongue; supped, again, of hallowed communion.  “A terrible, magnificent benevolence,” she allowed.  Then she scowled.  “But where is our beastlier companion?”  She was hesitant to reach for him—to pluck on the fiber that bound them, but— “Was he not meant to join us tonight?”</p><p>“Visiting Alberic.”  He stroked the fringe from her forehead as he rolled her to the side, both bodies propped by the flank.  “His sojourn began rather early in the evening.”  His hand moved the hair from her neck, his lips soon to follow.  One, two, three kisses up the column of her throat.  “Call on him?”</p><p>Her eyes fluttered.  Helpless to resist their Commander, she let her spirit sing along that red-aurum thread—a breath, an aetherical whisper—<em>come home.  </em>Meanwhile, she toyed with Borel’s waves and ringlets; savored the texture, soft as thick feathers.  “He came to me in Norvrandt, you know.” </p><p>“Aye.”  Aymeric’s breath touched her ear, kisses peppered up the shell.  She shivered.  “So he said.  I know his methods well.”  A smile on her skin.  “He will always endeavor to shadow—hence the fond epithet, <em>hound.”</em></p><p>A flicker down the filament, scalding as wyrmbreath.  <em>Bold, wicked thing.</em>  The smell of smoke, faint and sudden, in her nose.  Thunder in her chest.  <em>You dare issue such a commandment?</em></p><p>Her hands stilled by Aymeric’s ears, fingers on the flushed tapers.  She hoped both could feel her ragged heartbeat—the seraph at her jugular, the distant, grumbling fiend. </p><p>
  <em>Merely the messenger.  Our Lord Speaker bid me.</em>
</p><p>Warmth from the thread.  A tensile vibration.</p><p>And silence.</p><p>“Do you speak with him?”  That black-velvet voice brought her back from inner realms.  She tipped her chin to find him gazing up to behold her, eyes molten, blue-white.  “Does he come?”</p><p>“He will now.”  Samantha dipped to kiss their fair master.  “I invoked your name.”</p><p>His smile was wide.  “An unholy deed.” </p><p>She kissed the mouth around his bared teeth.  “My most powerful incantation.”</p><p>“Enchantress,” he whispered, biting gently.</p><p>“Witch,” she corrected, grinning down with bitten lips.  “In thrall to a heavenly creature.”</p><p>“A demon,” Aymeric breathed, craning his open mouth to reach her.</p><p>“An angel,” she reasoned, “With the hunger of a beast.”</p><p> </p><p>☾ ☄ ✧</p><hr/><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>at the heart of it all, his gravity lies.</p><p> </p><p>by the way, thank you so much for reading and leaving your wonderful feedback.  your comments are treasures that fuel me with life.  rest assured, I will be responding to everything (and catching up on everyone's ffxivwrite entries) as soon as the chaos of September has eased. </p><p>I adore you so very greatly. bless you for feeding this humble indulgence ;u;</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0021"><h2>21. Prompt #20: Toll (G'raha Tia/WoL)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>“Go back,” she spat, hunching further and faster toward the shadows.</p><p>Leave the witch before you suffer curses.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Free day, chosen word "Toll."</p><p>We return to the CT timeline where we last left off (which I think was "Tooth and Nail").</p><p>Gently NSFW.  G'raha/WoL, WoL POV.</p><p>Very unedited.  Posting really fast.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>✧ ☄ ☽</p><p> </p><p>Time was running out.</p><p>In a realm of insatiable darkness, their erstwhile companions were trapped—beyond the bounds of the rift, beyond the concept of space as they knew it.  With the help of Rammbroes and the Sons, and no small measure of G’raha’s irrepressible bluster, Cid and his fellows strove against the ticking clock.  Together they would muster something, <em>anything,</em> to chart a viable route.</p><p>Morning stretched to evening stretched to one protracted night.  Cast in lamplight and the stubs of guttering candles, the machine was incomplete; fragmentary, touch-and-go, the pressure of needing to <em>save them</em> driving Samantha near to mad.</p><p><em>There must be something—</em> </p><p>Her mind raced with the arcane things at her disposal—putative theories, untested incantations, her mind a muddled necropolis.  So many secrets absorbed and forgotten; so much substance lost to decay.  With the weight, the anchor, the <em>safety</em> of the blessing, her comprehension corroded.  So much practical magick, past recollection.  She frowned against the realization and bore her heels into the ground; thrust forth a coil of unrefined aether for the apparatus—</p><p>“Enough.”  A strong hand clasped her shoulder, breaking focus on the spell.</p><p>She blinked to find Cid’s concerned stare.  The mages nearest pretended to ignore them.   “But I <em>know</em> thaumaturgy,” she insisted, voice rough, brow beetled.  She squared her stance and raised her staff again.  “The black was my curriculum, before this whole mess.  I know I can—”</p><p>“Samantha.”  Garlond took her by both shoulders then; fixed her with pale eyes like silver linings.  “We need you whole and hale for whatever comes next.”  Commanding, but gentle.  “Go rest, and keep your aether to yourself.”</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Hands shoved in patched-again pockets, quarterstave strapped to her back, the Warrior of Light aimed her dark stare on the horizon and stalked into the night.  Darkness, twinkling, starlit.  The air felt cool, far closer to autumn, now.  She pulled her scarf up over her nose and scowled at it. </p><p>“Samantha.”  He was jogging to catch up.  She was ready to explode.  “Wh—”</p><p>“Go back,” she spat, hunching further and faster toward the shadows.</p><p>
  <em>Leave the witch before you suffer curses.</em>
</p><p>His footsteps only grew louder.  “Fat chance,” came his scoff, sharp and haughty and bitter.  The light of Saint Coinach’s was fading, his static energy close enough to feel.  Something crackled.  “You were going back without me.”</p><p>Her jaw clenched.  She tried not to sprint as she moved more swiftly.  “No.”  Not exactly.  “Rammbroes needs you to stay.”</p><p>
  <em>Away from the weapon.  Apart from the unholy armament of Hydaelyn.</em>
</p><p>He snorted at that.  “Rammbroes is <em>sleeping.” </em> </p><p>“Cid, then,” she hissed, and that earned his cold, stiff laugh. </p><p>A body hurtled up beside her, and before she could lurch from his blazing trajectory, G’raha was grappling hands in her cowl, dragging her down to eye level.  <em>“Samantha Rosalyn Floravale—” </em></p><p>She gulped for breath and clawed at his fingers, jerking her chin to the night sky.  “Let go of me,” she croaked.  Tears in her eyes.  “Get <em>away from me—” before something else terrible happens.</em></p><p>He held fast.  “I will not,” he growled, leveraging every onze of his hidden density against her.  “Tell me what afflicts you,” he demanded.  One hand rose to grip the back of her neck, and she gasped at the clandestine force of his strength.  “Tell me now, before I someway wrest it free.”</p><p>She was breathless, heaving for air, one hand hooked at the wrist in her front, the other braced at his chest.  What afflicts me?  <em>What afflicts me?</em>  “No,” she panted, saltwater blinked to her cheeks.  “It’s wrong—it’s all <em>wrong—” </em></p><p>“Tell me,” his voice like starlit heat lightning, a faraway threat.  “What—”</p><p>“Me!”  The words tore from her throat and she barked at the firmament.  “This!  Everything—Xande, the Tower, this whole godsdamned <em>world—”</em> Her face twisted into a foul, aching grimace.  She aimed it away from him, veiled by dark tangles of hair.  “What in the hells are we <em>fighting for, </em>Raha?”  Her voice again, smaller.  “And what does it matter—” her breath hitched.  “What do my <em>heroic accomplishments </em>matter,” she whispered, “If they leave me lost and ruined in the end?”</p><p>“Look at me.”  The hand at her nape raked to steer her back.  Two eyes, mismatched shades of twilight.  Dawn and dusk.  Ends and beginnings.  “Why do you feel lost and ruined?”</p><p>Tears streaked down her face.</p><p>
  <em>Because I am nothing.  Hollow.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>A vessel for Light, nothing more, nothing less.  </em>
</p><p>“I told you before.”  It was less than a breath.  “I’m not a hero, Raha—”</p><p>“Merely one person who wants to make a difference,” he recited.  Fingertips combed up to cradle her scalp.  He stroked her hair.  “A commendable, compassionate, dare I say captivating person—as are all who might be hailed heroes.”</p><p>Her heart skipped and stuttered.  She blinked through the blur.  “But Her blessing—” her voice cracked.  She searched his stare for something unfound.  Did he care how small and brittle she sounded?  Did he care for her, truly, at all?  “What would you think of me, were I without it?”</p><p>Her heart burned, too close to the flame.</p><p>G’raha merely leaned nearer.  “I daresay much the same.”</p><p>His words were hot and fast.  She wondered if he tasted saltwater on her mouth—wondered for splits of split instants, before she lapsed into the kiss.  There was an impossible power behind the way he moved his lips; something old-souled and patient, almost ageless.</p><p>The young Baldesion scholar of Allag, arcane and ever so strange. </p><p>He curled them tongue to tongue, and she gladly let him.  There, in the dimness past the crystal fringes, they locked in a desperate embrace.  His voice lost its smoothness, its rich, steadied pace.  “Take me back with you.”  His voice was dry on her mouth.  “Let me try—to show you.”</p><p><em>Back in Silvertear,</em> she said—<em>had it only been last night?</em></p><p>How much time passed since Xande, since the yawning toll of oblivion?</p><p>She tipped back and shivered; slipped from the cage of his arms and found him with wide, frightened eyes.  “I’m afraid,” she admitted.  “Scared for Unei and Doga—fearful for bloody old Scaeva.  Terrified for tomorrow, that I might—” <em>—love you enough to regret it.</em> </p><p>Nothing came out.  Her voice was extinguished, wick burned slim.  She swallowed the gall of more salt.  Her lips curled back from her teeth in a grimace, and she hissed up to the heavens. </p><p>
  <em>Why can I not tell him?  What have I to lose?</em>
</p><p>One thumb stroked her neck, moving tangles.  “As am I,” he murmured, and she was unsure if he referred to her or what happened in the Tower.  He took a stiff breath.  “But take me with you, regardless.  What can I do?”  An earnest glint in his stare.  “What would you have of me, Samantha—to ease your worries this night?”</p><p>His hand was warm and scuffed, and when he wove them, callus to callus, her heart wanted to be split and formed again better.  She could taste the ghost of his tongue in her mouth.  “Walk with me,” she rasped.  “And—” another wring and stutter of her topsy-turvy heart.  She gripped his hand like a lifeline.  “Would you sing that—song again?  The Ilsabardian one?”</p><p>Dry earth crunched beneath their feet.  “Ah,” he sighed, low and wistful.  Breathing evened, he wet his lips and glanced up through red lashes.  “The ballad—from your name day?”</p><p>Pebbles scattered at her toe tips as she swayed a bit closer.  “Last time, I think—” and she trembled to remember.  Twirling, whirling, floating in his arms—moored by his bright smile— “It ended too quickly.”</p><p>He moved as close as the span of his longbow allowed.  Along the back of her legs, a phantom caress; the flick of his tail, she realized, affectionately bending.  “Let me remember the melody.”  His thumb stroked her wrist.  They moved a few paces in silence.  He took a readying breath— </p><p>And then he was singing.</p><p>Bearings lost, wits dizzy, heart tumbling down, she hearkened to beautiful sounds.</p><p>
  <em>     We dreamed … [that evening], your [promise],<br/>… [birds singing] […] dreamed [in two] that season,<br/>     Glad, […] to give my [promise] too.</em>
</p><p>G’raha pressed nearer; relinquished her fingers—</p><p>—and his hand crept up her back, to catch at the cinch of her waist.</p><p>
  <em>… [kiss, cry], say [goodbye], sky above that [cold hilltop] stood by,<br/>     I sing your [name], only silence [remain],<br/>… now […] dear heart [my dearest] [so bright]?</em>
</p><p>The blunt tips of nails pressed to stroke through cloak and bodice, making her tremble.</p><p>
  <em>     Stay […] whispered [promise],<br/>     [warm] and sweet [song];<br/>… love, [warm] and true, […] gone, [dreamed of you].</em>
</p><p>He kissed the curve of her shoulder through layers of garb.</p><p>
  <em>     Your [promise], mine, [birds singing], time.<br/>… Dreamed [one warm] season,<br/>     Heart [two by two],</em>
</p><p>Her heart, pounding—</p><p>
  <em>     Your [name], [my dearest] ...<br/>     Our dreaming, [untrue].</em>
</p><p>Her blood thrummed, tipsy—the words half understood.  But it was a love song.  <em>A sad one.  </em></p><p>His voice faded into the darkness, his body warming hers.</p><p>A few paces.  “Lovely,” she croaked at last, husky. </p><p>He gripped to press them closer, side by side.  His lips on her shoulder again.  A whisper almost missed.  “Not half so much as you.”</p><p>Her pulse blurred her mind, a pressure in her chest.  She braced a hand to anchor at his shoulders.  G’raha Tia was a riddle, hard and charming and delightful; so bizarre he left her petrified.  But when he met her, eye to eye, something inside her found flight.  “You, too.”</p><p>He looked up at her with wide eyes and a smile.</p><p>
  <em>I love you.</em>
</p><p>Surely he knew.</p><p>Wound together by arm-lengths, they made their way back to the outpost—slow and solemn, the eternal wind as their guide.  She tried to savor; to memorize the shape of him, beside.  His ear brushed her shoulder, his tail at her thighs, dry earth crunched, and the atmosphere whispered.  She tasted the moss of the Fogfens, the smoke from the Castrum, and— “Can I ask you a question?”</p><p>He was looking ahead, something tense in his eyes. </p><p>She took a breath of cool air.  “Anything, Raha,” she managed.</p><p>He shuddered.  She caught a taste of her fear in his breathlessness.  “If I asked—” he twined his arm tighter; pressed closer, sidewise.  “If I told you what I wanted—” her heart raced.  “Would you trust me?”</p><p>Almost home.  Her hand clenched his right shoulder.  Her voice a soft hiss.  “I would try.”</p><p>Heat lightning in the distance, despite the cool night.  Both heads jerked to face it.  Like rosy levin, something desperate arced between them—hot and silent and tight.  Static filled her ears, the Silvertear cabin in sight.  “I—” and his hand was gone from her hip and her back, weaving their fingers together again.  “Home, first,” he said, the shallowest hint of a breath—and they were moving, very fast, past the last fulms of distance—up to the threshold, up through the door—hinges groaned shut as she closed it behind—</p><p>Her back on that ramshackle panel, the stretch of her staff a hard line.  His hips pinned her—his force, his strength, so unstated.  The ridge in his trousers was more than implied.  “I want to—" he crushed his face to her shoulder, in lieu of the cleave of her breasts.  “Take you to—<em>Thaliak—</em>why can’t I <em>say it</em>—”</p><p>She stroked the red fringe from his forehead and brushed her thumb along one ear.  Her voice trembled.  “To bed?” </p><p>He blinked and leant back as she struggled for volume, brow knitted, eyes wide.</p><p>Speechless.  Uncharacteristic.</p><p>A tip of his chin to say <em>aye.</em></p><p>She shivered.  “Might want to get rid of the longbow.”</p><p>He gasped and laughed and sprung away to unfasten it, weapon and quiver and arrows cast aside.  She eased from the doorframe to unlatch her staff, leaning it there by the archway.  Distance between them, but still eye to eye, they shed their outermost layers—her cowl, his doublet, aetherometer and trappings—her belt of components and focus stones—</p><p>She wondered if he could hear her breathing harder; if he could see the way her fingers fumbled the ties of her bodice.  He grappled his belt; unbuckled it free—stared back up at her intently as she teased her garments apart.  Shirt half-undone, he rushed to her side.  “Can I help—”</p><p>She laughed through an uncomfortable smile.  “If you like—”</p><p>His fingers were too stark on her clothes in the darkness—pale, broad-knuckled, callused, clawed nails blunted, freckles over the blue lines of veins—strong hands unclasping, unlacing, she wanted to—wanted to—took his scuffed palm in hers and pressed it under her half-opened shirt; stifled a gasp as he enthusiastically accepted.  “Gods, Samantha—” and both hands found her breasts, and she was sinking toward him, body on fire, his lips at her neck, tongue and teeth on her throat—</p><p>His fingers roamed down to her waist, down to the top of her thighs, down to clutch tightly and—</p><p>She swallowed a cry as he picked her up from the ground.</p><p>They locked eyes.  His pupils widened, then thinned back to slits.  With the weight of her body cradled effortlessly in his grip, her hunger roared and howled.  G’raha wet his lips.  Slowly, with no sign of struggle, he carried her past the partition, easing her back to the rickety pallet.</p><p>“Let me show you,” he said, as he knelt carefully overhead.  “How much you enchant me.”</p><p> </p><p>☾ ☄ ✧</p><hr/><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>barely made it</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0022"><h2>22. Prompt #21: Foibles (G'raha Tia/WoL)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Her brow tensed, something pained in the pitch of her stare.  A note of despair.  “Will you kiss me?”</p><p>His heart wrung tight.  “Of course—” why was she so anguished?  </p><p>G’raha scrambled into the fold of her body and reeled himself back; tried to touch lips to lips with only gentle desperation.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>18+ nervous foreplay.  G'raha/WoL, G'raha POV.</p><p>Continued from prior.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>☽ ✧ ☾</p><p> </p><p>“Wait.”</p><p>Even in the dimness, her face flushed dark.</p><p>Her bodice gone, his trousers loose, he froze at the edge of the bunk, perched half-above her.  G’raha tried to calm the way his air felt, hard and heavy.  “Of course, whatever you wish—”</p><p>Her chest was rising quickly, betrayed by the open blouse she shrugged down her shoulders; the thin, dark silk of her chemise, pulled taut across her breasts.  She let the shirt slide like runoff to the floor, and a scrap of light flickered to life in her fingers.  Sweat glistened on her neck, the spark casting shadows between them.  “Would you—ah,” her cheeks, splotched uneven, “Hand me the candle?”</p><p>From the dusty sill of the clouded window, where the bedframe was forcibly tucked, he plucked the burned-down stub and held it toward her; tried to still the way his whole arm trembled as she lifted her flame to the wick.  The shadows wiggled as both bodies tried not to shake.</p><p>Her forehead crinkled with worry as she watched—as she stretched across to replace the candle.  She barked a breathless laugh, bashfully meeting his gaze.  “How did you put it,” she wondered aloud, rearranging herself on the cobbling of blankets.  Her eyes roved his face.  “Some pair we make?”</p><p>Cast in the faint illumination, wisp of fire rippling past the drafts in the outpost, Samantha—so stern, so severe—was rendered, suddenly, timid.  Dressed only in chemise and scuffed-up black stockings, long legs folded awkwardly beneath, her dark shades and sharp angles were softened by candlelit night.</p><p>He prickled with something like coldness; a tension in his face—his feelings so strong, so uncontrollable, they were genuinely mind-numbing.  An itch behind his right eye.  Friction in his slackened trousers.  <em>Tell her you love her, you woebegone fool.</em>  “Some pair,” he breathed, his tail swinging slow arcs behind him.  Every nerve, every ilm of his spine was on alert, ears strained forward, knees perched on the provisional cushions, frozen half toward her, half away.  </p><p>She took a stiff breath.  Her voice wavered.  “I—wanted to see you,” she said, an exhalation.  “To be able—if we—” another breath.  In the low, amber light, he watched as red crept down her neck, down along incline of her chest, down past the scalloped brim of her chemise.  Her brow tensed, something pained in the pitch of her stare.  A note of despair.  “Will you kiss me?”</p><p>His heart wrung tight.  “Of course—” <em>why was she so anguished? </em> </p><p>G’raha scrambled into the fold of her body and reeled himself back; tried to touch lips to lips with only gentle desperation.  But she was impatient.  Mouth opened, legs bent to hold him, arms curled in welcome, her greed—<em>all for me—</em>made him <em>frantic.</em>  He kissed carelessly, deeply<em>—</em>kissed, messy with love and starvation he feared to express.  Kissed her and <em>kissed her,</em> kissed until she moaned into his mouth, until her hips rocked to rub up against him, his name scalding hot on her lips.  “Raha,” she breathed, both hands raked through his hair.</p><p>His scalp tingled.  She was combing out his plait.  From the haze of desire that drowned him, her face swam back into focus.  Her mouth was bruised from his attention.  The sight made him brainless, smalls tight, throat dry from panting.  He swallowed hard.  <em>Cover her with proof that I—</em></p><p>“Samantha,” he gasped.  “Do you trust me?”</p><p>In lieu of spoken answer, her hand stroked the nape of his neck, down the slope to the front of his shoulder.  Her fingertips dipped past the gape of his shirt, still on, but half-open.  His stomach jumped as she strayed along it, tracing the soft line of hair past his navel—roaming, diving, slowly down lower.  She paused, her eyes on his face.  “Is it alright if I—”</p><p>“Please,” he rasped, shallow.</p><p>Her fingers drifted past his loosened trousers, across the ridge of his arousal, and at the first cup of her palm full against him, he groaned.  He screwed his eyes shut and bucked into her hand; made a sound that was truly obscene.  She untied his smalls and dipped past them, bare skin against skin.  Her loose fist was heaven, his pulse so loud he could not hear above the pounding.  Surely she could feel it, where she touched him—feel the wild force of the desire she inspired.</p><p>He rocked his hips and leaned their foreheads together, desperate for sources of anchor.  “I wished you would touch me all summer.”  His whisper spilled, thoughtless, words rushing forth from his mouth.  “I wished you would want me.”</p><p>She moved to kiss him, gripping very gently.  “I did,” and though she was breathless, the words rang like thunder inside him.  “I wanted you, always,” she whispered, to his mouth.  “I hope you can forgive me.”</p><p>He almost wanted to cry.  Face strained with grief and adoration, he stroked her lips with his.  The question was so quiet, it was hardly even a gasp.  “What for?”</p><p>He slipped from her grip as she moved to ease down his trousers—to bare him to the chilled air.  She kissed the side of his mouth.  “For being frightened,” and her lips were on his jaw, then his neck—the breadth of his right-side tattoo.  Both hands worked him free of his bottoms, exploring his skin; curious palms against his haunches, the base of his tail.  He blushed and knelt to shift his pants aside; blushed afresh at how eager his length bobbed up high.  He tried not to look at himself—tried not to notice how flushed he was all over, splotchy patches of redness along his pale skin. </p><p>“I never realized,” he started, his voice hitched and thin.  She was staring, eyes wide, lips parted, like something about him was brilliant, magnificent, worthy of awe.</p><p>She took him in hand again.  His vision rolled out of focus. </p><p>Her breath on his mouth.  “That’s because I didn’t want you to.”</p><p>He took her lip between his teeth and sucked hard as she palmed his whole length.  “But—” he hissed a breath past the urge he felt to crush her to the mattress.  “If you told me—”</p><p>“You never told me, either.”</p><p>As he stared at her, dumbfounded, she took his lip to bite and suck in retaliation.  Red behind his eyes.  His cock flexed into her hand.  “No,” he agreed, bracing one hand on the blankets.  He used the other to stroke up her thigh; to delve beneath the hem of her chemise.  “Because I never—I never thought you might—” fingers paused, he laughed, breathless.  “Some pair we make.”</p><p>She grinned against his lips, wobbling, hesitating.  “I'm glad that we make it."</p><p> </p><p>☽ ✧ ☾</p><hr/><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0023"><h2>23. Prompt #22: Argy-bargy (Exarch/WoL)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Faceless and nameless, the thing she would dream.<br/>Before she thinks better—the ghost of his voice:</p><p>You know me, Samantha.</p><p>Her face, harsh and coy in absentia. <br/>Bold of you to say so, when all you stake is lies.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>NSFW, 18+.</p><p>Warnings for aggressive sexual fantasies, fantasizing about gentle bondage, power play, shifting power dynamics, fantasy negotiations for emotionally-complicated half-anonymous sex with consensual but dubious implications (still within a daydream).  Voyeurism without consent. </p><p>Perspective shifts to indicate dream state, sorry if it's confusing.  </p><p>WoL/Exarch, WoL POV followed by Exarch POV.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>✧ ☄ ☽</p><p> </p><p>She left bed for a drink from the flagon.</p><p>The water, long tepid, badly needed refreshing.  She grimaced into the vessel and let it fall back to the counter, weary eyes sliding back to tufts of mussed blankets—mind awake, body exhausted—</p><p>
  <em>Bloody Lakeland.</em>
</p><p>Night was returned—<em>Twelve forsaken Light everlasting—</em>and with the fresh advent of darkness, she longed to crawl back to the mattress; to nest in the bedsheets and fall deep asleep.  But slumber escaped her.  Even as she hefted her weight to the cushions—even as she wrapped herself up in the still-warm duvet—she sighed with inevitable impossibility.</p><p><em>Insomnia.</em>  An old demon returned in full force since she entered this hell.  Daily she numbed it, the urge to think of home.  But nightly, her mind drifted back to the heart—<em>her own heart, </em>left behind on the Source.  In many ways, she felt no different than the Scions stranded beside her:</p><p>Shorn from flesh, set adrift. </p><p>And this night, the first in a century, pulse heightened, fears stirred and splintered—</p><p>
  <em>Godsdamned Lightwardens.  Accursed Holminster.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>     … But now we have a way to contain that corruption.</em>
</p><p>She groaned and tossed to the opposite flank, scowled at the crook of the chamber—</p><p>
  <em>     Behold!  The monster's power is broken—</em>
</p><p>She shoved her face in her pillow.  Grimaced.  A grunt of gruff exasperation.</p><p>
  <em>Bloody godsdamned Crystal Exarch.</em>
</p><p>She closed her eyes, and behind them—there against the black frame of her eyelids, she relived that damnable vision—his slow, solemn motion to kneel low before her, robes mussed with dry grass and bleached dust motes, stars glittering above, as he pontificated, like a suitor or supplicant—</p><p>
  <em>     How many years have I waited for this moment …?<br/>
     For the one possessed of Her blessing?  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>     For you.</em>
</p><p>A prickle of heat scampered down the span of her backbone, and she crammed her face hard into the cushion.  No.  Gods damn it <em>no.</em>  <em>I hate him,</em> she swore, and every fiber inside her assented.  <em>How dare he bring me into this fight—so far away from mine?</em></p><p>
  <em>     Even should it cost me all I have—</em>
</p><p>To <em>wield her—</em></p><p>     —<em>that this world might be spared from oblivion.</em></p><p>A hot breath huffed into the pillow.</p><p>
  <em>     I concede it was wrong of me to summon you to this fight against your will.</em>
</p><p>“Do you, now,” she grumbled aloud.  “And are you very <em>sure of that?”</em></p><p>
  <em>     I swear on my life, I will one day atone for that deed.  But for the present …</em>
</p><p>“What of the present,” she spat, self-aware—a nattering hatter prattling to herself.  “What could you <em>possibly do,</em> Crystal Exarch—” she hissed out the title like venom, “—to prove that I should <em>trust you?”</em></p><p>… But that soft ring of hope in his voice as he asked, so short a time prior—</p><p>
  <em>     What say you?  Have I earned your trust for the moment, at least?</em>
</p><p>A softer sound from her, then.  A sniff from her nose.  <em>No, no, no—</em></p><p>Gods <em>damn it all,</em> the pillow was wet.  She thrust herself up from the mattress and threw the thing aside.  For <em>years and years—</em>through trials unimaginable—<em>the very inferno of Nidhogg,</em> she <em>was able to forget him.</em></p><p>But now—</p><p>Her whole body prickled.  She ground her teeth against the urge to scream, flopping back to the mattress.</p><p>
  <em>     … I am not familiar with that name.</em>
</p><p>“Like hells.”</p><p>She shoved herself out of the blankets and paced to the door.</p><p>Palm frozen on the handle, jaw tensed, for the twelfth time she stopped herself from storming to the Dossal Gate—imposing her presence in the Ocular and <em>forcing him to answer—</em></p><p>
  <em>By what claim, what power, would you dare to call on me—</em>
</p><p>
  <em>If you were not someone who—</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Someone I—</em>
</p><p>
  <em>…</em>
</p><p>Teeth bared in a grimace, she loosened her grip; limped back to the bed, sank against it.  Some hero, turned coward again.  Afraid to give too much voice to it, same as back then.  Her legs slipped beneath undone covers, one arm toward the lump on the floor—hugged the pillow to her chest, tired mind already broken—</p><p>Faceless and nameless, the thing she would dream.  Her lip caught between her own teeth.  One hand between her legs, and before she thinks better—the ghost of his voice, rich and crisp:</p><p>
  <em>You know me, Samantha.</em>
</p><p>Her face, harsh and coy in absentia.  <em>Bold of you to say so, when all you stake is lies.</em></p><p>In the vision, he falters.  Darkness covers his eyes.  <em>Let me show you.</em></p><p>A stroke against the stretch of her pantalettes.</p><p>
  <em>Make me believe it, then—Exarch.</em>
</p><p>✧ <br/>
  ✧<br/>
✧</p><p>  ✧<br/>
     ✧</p><p>        ✧</p><p>          <em>… </em>“I would never dare to—”</p><p>“Dare,” she whispers, sudden and biting.</p><p>“Samantha—” it rolls from his lips like a prayer.  There is a pause.  In that moment, a weight settles between them; impossible time and the fates of two realms, all but beyond comprehension.  Both of his hands stroke the length of her spine; pause at her trembling wrists.</p><p>She holds them together, a stark invitation.  “Compel me to trust you.”</p><p>Another beat of hesitation.  Then the calm, cerulean glow of lambent magick fills the chamber.  Aether curls like vines around her skin, tasting of sunlight and ozone and the crush of Azys Lla, and beneath it … beneath the pressure of Allag, something else.  Old tomes and parchment.  Quill feathers.  Sandalwood.</p><p>His aether.</p><p>Even in the theater of her own imagination, she gasps against the urge to weep, burying her face in the blankets.</p><p><em>It's him.  It has to be.  I knew from the start and I—</em> “Hells.”  The word is muffled by cushions.  She digs her nose deeper, pressed into the humble nest; takes a desperate, steadying breath.  “I need this,” she breathes, face wet with tears.  “I need to <em>know</em>—need you to <em>prove to me</em>—”</p><p>
  <em>Raha.</em>
</p><p>The very walls around them shudder.  There is a soft, tinkling sound as the Tower bodily trembles.  Then, feather-light, his crystallized hand roams her backbone—warmth inside, edges subtly chilled.  The tips of blunted, gemstone nails scrape, very gently, and she aches, heartbreakingly familiar.</p><p>His voice is so low, it barely makes sound.  “Warrior mine.”</p><p>He curls his frame above and behind her, small but sturdy, his presence incredibly potent.  Layers warmed by his body curtain to brush at her thighs, his Spoken hand drifting, fingers caught on ragged skirts.  “If you ask this of me,” he breathes, and she can feel his body shiver, “If you seek—and someway <em>remember</em>—” lips touch her nape, distant and liminal.  “For the sake of present and future—”</p><p>She makes a promise.  “I will pretend to forget.”</p><p>Reluctance.  Acceptance.  A catch in his throat that dies without sound.</p><p>Then, in a delicate shift, her pantalettes are abandoned, her backside bared to the air.  His crystalline hand curls to hold her bound wrists.  Her legs tremble with anticipation.  She hears him inhale; feels him close in behind her.  “Trust me,” he whispers, something nudging <em>right there—</em></p><p>His name rushes up—presses hard at her lips.  She swallows it; crushes her face into blankets to muffle all sound.  Warm stone holds her wrists in a vise grip.  She feels sick with how badly she wants him—with how swiftly his width sinks within.  She cants her hips back and he bends overhead, his weight a soothing pressure.  “Trust me,” he breathes, warm on her backbone.</p><p>She whimpers.</p><p>Would it feel the same?  Would time or dearth or unspeakable distance make her body forget him? </p><p>Or would she remember <em>what he felt like—</em>the sweet, slow stretch to take him in?</p><p>The feel of them connected wrung that raw groan from his throat—sharp and sure and satisfied—</p><p>To reach him beneath all the pretense—</p><p>To bypass the Exarch and breach his defenses—</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p>☽ ✧ ☾</p><p> </p><p>Crystal clamped over his own open mouth, Spoken flesh against flesh, hips snapped forward.</p><p>He pumped himself and watched through the blue phantom frame of the Tower—</p><p>Watched as she writhed in the blankets—</p><p>Her mouth, mutely gasping, caught upon a noiseless name; one that, even gestured, plunged through him like levin.  The shape alone was enough to<em> remember</em>—sent him plummeting, tumbling, down past glittering strata, through echelons of memory, oceans of fathomless stardust—</p><p>
  <em>Raha—</em>
</p><p>He knelt to the floor, robes crumpled, soundless; knelt alone, but envisioned embracing—rutting her ruthlessly down to the mattress—granting no respite, no hope of response; stealing her air to breathe back to her mouth—<em>I love you, loved then—love you now and hereafter—</em></p><p>In the glass, she arced and twisted, violent, stiff—</p><p>Fixed on her anguish, the tears on her face—</p><p>Her lips, slack and panting that long-outlawed name—</p><p>Shorn from flesh, bleak and silent, he found fleeting pleasure in blindness.</p><p> </p><p>☽ ☄ ☾</p>
<hr/><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0024"><h2>24. Prompt #23: Shuffle (Exarch/WoL)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sam improves (?) upon some cues from Aymeric and Estinien.</p><p>Draft both unedited and unfinished.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>AU I guess?  Technically continued from chapter prior?</p><p>Exarch POV.  Exarch/WoL.</p><p>Warning for generally invasive (but not bawdy) use of aether.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>☽ ✧ ☾</p><p> </p><p>The connection was dispelled. </p><p>The dregs of his shame were erased from the chamber, every ilm of his body alert.</p><p>She was coming.  He knew in the way he always sensed it, now, whenever something of interest trespassed ley lines by the Tower.  Had she somehow noticed his covert attention?  Did she, with her arcane knowledge and Blessing, somehow realize what the Exarch—<em>old, tasteless, prurient creature</em>—had <em>witnessed?</em></p><p>He composed himself; magicked away the last remnants of dishevelment—straightened his robes, arranged the stiff cowl on his head, refreshed the spell to keep it held static.  So it was that when he received the announcement—when the door to the Ocular burst, quite suddenly, ajar—he fancied himself prepared.  Fancied, for when the Warrior strode into view, it slammed him hard from chest to stomach, blunt as a blow from a poleaxe or mallet, fierce and breathtaking as windshear.  He widened his stance and braced sandaled soles to the floor, readied to weather her tempest. </p><p>“Samantha.”  He tried to mold the taste of her name in his mouth; to bleed it of passion.  “This is an unanticipated visit.”</p><p>Her dark mane was tousled, her face splotched and flushed.  Somewhere between the time he stopped watching and now, she donned something over her nightgown—a charcoal-grey cloak with a cowl, loose-laced boots tracking blanched Holminster ash.  The gaze with which she pierced him was dull and halfway ruthless, but as a brief hush rose between them, a margin of wind left her sails. </p><p>“You,” she grunted, staring straight at his shrouded eyes. </p><p>His heart flopped and stuttered, aground in his chest. </p><p><em>Aye,</em> he could say, a play on the word with the flavor of jest.  Or he could simply hold silent.</p><p>He chose the latter; gave a mere tilt of his head.</p><p>Her face was grim, lips pressed thin—cold and stony.  “There is power in what we say,” she began, very strangely.  The phrase sounded like recitation.  “But I never managed his calm or restraint, and misuse my words regardless.”  A breath caught in her cheeks.  She stared down at him.</p><p>Another heavy jump and flutter at his breastbone.  “Have you come with words for me, then?”</p><p>She blinked and swept dark hair behind her ear; a star-white streak glittered out from her temple.  “I did,” she muttered.  “I came all this way to—from the Pendants—” her voice stalled in her throat. </p><p>Something peculiar passed over her expression.  Something wan, almost sick, almost past his comprehension.  But though he was old, he was not yet sightless.  “Do you wish me to invite them?”</p><p>“No,” she barked.  “Yes, but—” her face crinkled.  She shoved hands on her hips, wrinkling the slouch of her mantle, and scowled down at him, full bore.  “I can’t decide which bit offends me more.  You must truly deem me moronic, to think I wouldn’t challenge your namby-pamby <em>story</em>—to think I wouldn’t despise this—” she flicked her hands to signal the parenthetical, rather rudely, “—<em>Crystal</em> <em>Exarch,”</em> and wrinkled her nose like a petulant child, gifting him a grimace, “For wrenching us all through the godsforsaken rift on a fool’s aetherical errand no one fully understands.”  She huffed and pouted and thrust out an arm.  “Come here.”</p><p>Shock pierced him through like an arrow.  “Beg pardon?”</p><p>She flexed her hand in a <em>hither-now</em> gesture.  “Come on, get.”</p><p>He was frozen, blinking, completely taken aback.  Half of him felt rooted, absolutely, to the floor, the other half eager to listen.  “F-from what boon could the conversation benefit if—”</p><p>She groaned and lurched toward him, and he had a split second to consider his alternatives—backing into the corner—throwing himself from the Tower with magick—surging somewhere down the ley lines in Lakeland—</p><p>Her hand against his Spoken wrist was warm and clammy, palm rough—<em>aether burns—</em>from fighting the Eaters that day.  His heart rattled, jarring his chest, cacophonous discord that extended past his mortal coil.  A dissonant humming, subtle but clear, chimed from the walls.</p><p>“I suppose that’s the Tower,” she grumbled, glancing overhead, and before he could wrangle the wastes of his wits for an answer, from her hand, through his skin, he felt an essence slip—aether with which he was distressingly familiar—finally, flawlessly remembered, to summon her, attuned himself throughout—</p><p>
  <em>Salt, waxmelt, rosehips—</em>
</p><p>She was reaching inside him, breaching his scintillant ramparts—spectral fingers of magick clawing, careful but brutal, past his meticulous veil—grasping exactly for filaments of <em>G’raha.</em></p><p>He gasped.  A tinkling shivered around them, just as she plucked at his long-buried heart of hearts.  Her hand was a vise at his wrist.  “I knew it,” she hissed, as the core of the Crystarium trembled—as eras of Allagan magicks reshuffled around them, alarmed by the disturbance of their keeper.</p><p>His throat was dry.  For the first time in some span of ponderous years, all but forgotten, he felt more man than Tower.  “This is wrong,” he croaked.  “You were never supposed to—engage in aetherometry<em>—” </em></p><p>And he was being dragged in, by the palm that held him captive, her long body hinged at the waist, her dark hair curtained down around him like rainfall.  Her voice was ragged.  “Why,” she rasped, “Would you ever expect me to behave?”  With the hand that didn’t entrap him, she snatched the fringe of his cowl.  It budged not one ilm from his head.  A jolt of manic pleasure flooded his system as she relinquished his wrist; dug both thumbs at the brim of his immovable hood and groaned in frustration.  “I swear on all I find holy—<em>Raha—”</em></p><p>A force in his ears, all sound drowned out.  A faint, phantom ringing.  His own breath within was overloud, his pulse a deafening pressure.  Where were his hands—<em>scrabbling to snatch her</em>.    </p><p>His mouth was a furnace, his voice, supplication.“Say it again.”</p><p>He hung at the front of her cloak and she stared down at him, her face a whirlwind of feeling.  Anguish.  Betrayal.  Desperation.  “Raha,” it rolled from her throat like dark thunder.  “You shite-eating twat of an arsecheek.”</p><p> </p><p>☽ ✧ ☾</p><hr/><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>SEVEN MINUTES TO GO</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0025"><h2>25. Prompt #24: Beam (5.3+ Scions & Sandwich)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>It was rare that she dressed in a ballgown.  “By the stars, Samantha—you look—”</p><p>She perched hands on hips and frowned.  “Don’t you dare try to distract me.  What happened?”</p><p>G'raha's face tensed and splotched behind a meek, sheepish grin.  “I may have—potentially—” he winced in preparation, “—unintentionally upturned a phial of—questionable alchemical descent—”</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Pure slice of life scene-building, humor, fluff, and Scion shenanigans.</p><p>WoL POV, followed by Aymeric POV.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>✧ ☄ ☽</p><p> </p><p>Samantha Rosalyn Floravale was not exactly known for being <em>patient.</em></p><p>It was a cultivated skill, one that required ample practice, and while she had plenty of rehearsal as Warrior of both Light and Darkness—performed countless chores and tasks and deeds on behalf of so many others—as a rule, forbearance, the natural <em>virtue,</em> was not one she possessed.</p><p>“What in the hells is <em>going on in there?”</em></p><p>A muffled scramble.</p><p>She shoved herself up against the long-locked door, rouged cheek pressed to cold wood grain. </p><p>A low growl from her throat.  “If I don’t see head or tail of you in the <em>next few breaths—”</em></p><p>“One moment!”</p><p>Another unsettling racket.  She cringed and grimaced.  “We are going to be late, or else need to—”</p><p>The door flung open so suddenly that, in a tinkling of jewelry and scrabbling of heels, she stumbled into the chamber; fumbled into a pair of stout arms outstretched to catch her.  A pair of very pale, very freckled, very <em>naked arms,</em> completely unfit for destined climates. </p><p>She took a stiff step back—adjusted the bodice and train of her gown—surveyed him and—</p><p>“Good gods Raha—are you still in your <em>underclothes?”</em></p><p>Her voice rose on the outro, scandalized—a bit too Leveilleurian for her liking.  But the evidence was, quite literally, before her: he was dressed only in long winter smalls and an undershirt.  His eyes flicked not-surreptitiously across her, a flush spreading slowly up his neck as he took in the uncommon spectacle.  It was rare that she dressed in a ballgown.  “By the stars, Samantha—you look—”</p><p>She perched hands on hips and frowned.  “Don’t you dare try to distract me.  What happened?”</p><p>G'raha's face tensed and splotched behind a meek, sheepish grin.  “I may have—<em>potentially—” </em>he winced in preparation, “—unintentionally upturned a phial of—<em>questionable alchemical descent</em> onto the apparel Tataru so graciously provided.”</p><p>Before she could shove her way past the half-naked stammerer in search of the damage, a third party arrived.  “Twelve forfend,” the new voice behind her.  In her periphery, Alphinaud appeared, fully bedecked and ornamented—snowy hair half-loose around his shoulders, looking carefully, carelessly tousled.  Under normal circumstances, she would have snorted and asked something like <em>taking cues from our favorite growling critic?</em>  But now, she agreed with his censure:</p><p>“How in the heavens are we to find him something else?”</p><p>Her mind raced.  “I’ve no idea,” she groused, measuring Leveilleur.  “You’re still too bloody small—” that earned a hot, reproachful glance, “—and I can’t think of anyone else who might keep a spare wardrobe of—” a wild idea.  “Wait.  Oh gods—<em>I think I know who might help us—” </em></p><p>She was reaching for both, fingers stretched and half-crackling with transportation magick.</p><p>G’raha flinched away in mortification.  “Let me dress myself!”  He stalked back toward the closet, copper tail lashing, fluffed twice its size.  She took the moment to peer through the room, gaze drawn at once by the blue aetherical smoke that conspicuously smoldered from one corner.  He was hopping into long trousers, shoving his tail through the back, shrugging on a heavy shirt—</p><p>“What in the world was in the container?” she asked, eyes wide as he returned.</p><p>“An experiment,” came the casual answer, red gaze agleam.  He shoved his feet into boots and yanked a cloak around his shoulders—left the cowl good and down, <em>Twelve bless.</em>  “Now, then—” he extended a hand, meeting her stare.  “Shall we?”</p><p>She wove their fingers together; jerked her chin to the other.  “Get close to me,” she said, and before she could snatch his well-attired forearm, Alphinaud scrunched himself up to her side.  She laughed, wrapping her grip around his shoulders—closing her eyes.  Aether prickled down her spine, freezing, sizzling, cobwebbing past the foundation of the building, deep into the crusts and breathings of the shard itself.</p><p>Alphinaud’s sudden exclamation.  “What about Tataru?”</p><p>She cackled.  “Tataru told me to meet her there.”</p><p> </p><hr/><p>☾ ✧ ☽</p><p> </p><p>The chime rang a bit before projected.</p><p>Luckily Aymeric, in all his impeccable timing, was dressed already in finery and enjoying a fresh pot of tea.  All the better to entertain whatever frazzled gaggle of Scions awaited.  Estinien was still sequestered upstairs.  Whether he idled to avoid the symposium entirely or engaged in more respectable preparations, Borel could not say.</p><p>He set his cup in its saucer and ambled to the vestibule; found Rémy greeting his semi-unexpected guests.</p><p>“Aymeric.”  Her breath clouded the air she dragged in from outside—cold as ice—but it was not the chill that robbed air from his chest.  All else disappeared as he took in the vision—her long frame dripping in gold and platinum white, her star-bright hair pinned up and back.  Awe prickled over his skin as he compared her to the Fury; a sun-warmed Coerthan prophet of fire and ice.  She drew near, his Warrior angel, haloed all around by the peculiar aetherochemical fizzle of freshly-used magick.  The atmosphere filled with the sweet, distinct flavor of petals and wax. </p><p>Undeterred by his ceremonial garb, Samantha shoved herself in his arms and strained up for a kiss.  He granted tribute swiftly—nothing denied to the goddess of Light.  “Clothes,” she gasped.  “Do you have any old things?”  She started to pull back, and then kissed him again.  “From when you were younger?”</p><p>He laughed, mute and breathy.  “Is this how you would betray my bad habits?”</p><p>Her smile, pure and vivid, fully gleamed.  “Your veritable wyrm-hoarding, you mean?”</p><p>He beamed back, helpless; touched their noses together.  “With many moons of Wyrmbloodian assistance.”  He collected himself, glancing past her.  The rest of the world swam back into existence.  “Who among you has need of my—<em>carefully curated collection?”</em></p><p>Leveilleur, dapper and dashing, wore an apologetic expression.  The other, dressed far less magnificently, wrung his hands together and cast a rueful grin, ears pressed flat to his head.     </p><p>“Lord Speaker.”  G’raha’s voice was rich and clear, but subdued by chagrin.  “Do forgive the imposition.”</p><p> </p><p>☄ ☽ ❅ ☾ ✧</p><hr/><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>trying to come up with a scene I'm happy with in two hours is a terrifying thrill</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0026"><h2>26. Prompt #25: Wish (G'raha Tia/WoL)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>She was tired of whys.  Tired of crying.  Tired of despising—for how could she ever despise him?</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>You were my last, dearest wish.</p><p>End of CT, WoL POV.  Grief of heartbreak and wishes unsaid ... and one made, wistful, to the heavens.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>✧ ☄ ☽</p><p> </p><p>Cold stone bit her thighs.</p><p>She shifted on the rough ledge; felt her stockings snag and catch.  The air had a far touch of ice, now, the cool taste of autumn omnipresent—but when she shivered, it was not from the chill.</p><p>Summer was gone.</p><p>He was gone along with it.</p><p>She stared at the stars, bright winking pinpricks in the heavens.  Her tears were daubed and dried, all proof of mourning long banished.  Merely the visible evidence, for the cavernous ache now torn through her chest was a void left ragged and vacant—throne barren, gate vanished, a world of darkness locked inside.</p><p>If this was what losing him felt like …</p><p>Samantha scrunched knees to her chest. </p><p>She was tired of whys.  Tired of crying.  Tired of despising—<em>for how could she ever despise him?</em></p><p>Mostly she tired of yearning; waking, frantic in the night—hands raking, fruitless, through the empty bed beside her—<em>waking nightmare—</em>pacing the Stones filled with smoke and ash and sadness, itching to race from the Toll to the Tower and wring herself dry flinging aether to rouse him.</p><p>
  <em>I wish—</em>
</p><p>But she tired of wishing, for what were wishes, really?  No more than wisps of ephemeral shimmers, tenuous, insubstantial—illusory and discarnate as a promise never possessed.</p><p>He never made a promise, that much was fact; not beyond the hope to chart his imminent course by her starshine.  Every day, every night that long summer, love was implied, but …</p><p>Never spoken.</p><p><em>You knew how I felt,</em> the refrain in her mind.<em>  We showed it to each other—</em></p><p>
  <em>Nothing we say will make you change your mind, will it?</em>
</p><p>Samantha blinked the blur from her vision. </p><p>Waste no more time on chimeric desires.  So said her mother, because she saw her daughter’s flaws; knew she wanted what she wanted with a fierce and merciless fire.  Burning, brutal and vicious, consumed all she touched with the spark of her raw, gnawing appetite.</p><p>She stretched stiff arms and glanced at the sky—caught sight of one flaming bolide, arcing through the night.  Primordial aether pricked and stirred, inside.</p><p>
  <em>Astral fire, umbral ice.</em>
</p><p>Inhale cold air.  Dense pressure in her chest.  She refused to look at the glinting blue monolith; fixed, instead, on the white sickled crescent up high.  A sharp shard of stardust and a moon gleam—</p><p>Another bolide, burning bright.</p><p>Wetness filled her eyes.  A whisper, almost soundless, like a sigh. </p><p>“I never—”</p><p>
  <em>I swore against wishes—</em>
</p><p>“But I—”</p><p>A breath of the crisp, eternal wind.</p><p>Lashes fluttered shut above hot water.</p><p>“As you know,” she breathed, warm as an ember, “Among the Twelve … Althyk—” her voice hitched.  “Was warden of time.”  Her mouth wobbled.  “Keeper—” salt in her throat.  “Past and future.”  Chilled stone scraped her palms as she braced herself forward; let brine coat her face as wholly as darkness.  “His sister Nymeia—the Spinner of Fate—” she gasped and stared up at the night.  “Master of water and watcher of skies—”</p><p>
  <em>She, along with Brother Time, saw the Falls for their ultimate nature—</em>
</p><p>Samantha traced the constellations veiling Silvertear; tried not to think of the crystals in his eyes.  “The center of all that was,” she whispered, soft and anguished.  “And ever would be.”</p><p>She trembled. </p><p>“I don’t know if you can hear me,” she breathed. </p><p>Althyk.  Nymeia.  Menphina.  Azeyma.</p><p>Midgardsormr.</p><p>
  <em>Mother Hydaelyn.</em>
</p><p>“But—”</p><p>Her aether stretched into the crust of Mor Dhona.  A wisp of it rippled into unseen lines—ley veins, webbed out in delicate fractals.  The glimmers heavensward transposed ice into fire.  She sniffed and propped her chin at her knees; hugged her skirts around them.  “If love and truth are two sides of the same—” a heavy sigh.  “What must I wish for to find it?” </p><p>The tears pricked her eyes again.</p><p>“What must I do—for true love, abiding?”  The words spilled forth like someone else was respiring, thrilling in a way that never happened when she tried.  “Someone to adore me with the force of an eclipse—an entire celestial cosmos inside?” </p><p>Bright, divine, and blinding, like comets in the night …</p><p>Past the salt and bitters in her mouth, autumn crowded—dampened and amber, sweet fallen leaves, turned earth and stalwart alpine, honeyed-gold trees.  “But not so fleeting,” she whispered.  “No.  If I’m wasting time wishing, eager for an impossible dream—”</p><p>A compulsion dragged her to look at it; that sharp, sparkling outline.</p><p>There where they closed the last chapter.</p><p>Where, sealed, he sleeps—</p><p>“Grant me love, next time,” she breathed, “Without ending.”</p><p> </p><p>☾ ☄ ✧</p>
<hr/><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Riffs on both [<a href="#section0002">Prompt #1</a>] and [<a href="#section0020">Prompt #19</a>] of this collection, "Crux" and "Where the Heart is," plus a little [<a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/12599668/chapters/50337455">Chapter 71</a>], "Cover," of Astral Fire, Umbral Heart.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0027"><h2>27. Prompt #26: Adynaton (G'raha Tia/WoL)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Continues from <a href="#section0022">Foibles</a>.</p><p>A sharp breath, cool on her skin.  “Is this too fast—” </p><p>“No,” she croaked.  Her fingers joined his.  All was wet, mixed with sweat and their slickness.  He moved overhead, his long fringe a veil—his mouth chasing hers, hot and panicked.</p><p>“Sorry,” he gasped, passed through a desperate kiss.</p><p>She stole it from his lips.  “Don’t apologize,” she whispered. </p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>: adynaton; a figure of speech to imply something will never happen.<br/>: hyperbole taken to extreme, insinuating a complete impossibility; "when pigs fly" being a classic example.</p><p>18+, NSFW. Graphic depictions of sex.<br/>POV alternating between G'raha POV, WoL POV, G'raha POV.<br/>We skip back in CT timeline, just before World of Darkness.</p><p>Sometimes, impossibilities actually happen.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>☽ ✧ ☾</p><p> </p><p>Strong hands worked him free of his bottoms, exploring his skin.</p><p>Curious palms at his haunches, his tail.  G’raha blushed, cast his trousers aside; blushed afresh at how keenly his length bobbed to attention.  He tried not to look at himself—tried not to notice the flush that crept all over, ruddy-red patches splotched across his pale skin.</p><p>Bared to chilled air, his voice hitched, thin.  “I never realized,” but he stopped, for she was staring—staring at <em>him, </em>eyes glinting, lips parted, like his body was exquisite, transcendent, worthy of sin.  She took him in hand again.  His vision flickered out of focus. </p><p>Her breath on his mouth.  “I didn’t want you to.”</p><p>“But—” he took her lip between his teeth and sucked as she palmed his whole length; hissed past the urge he felt to pounce her to the mattress.  “If you told me—”</p><p>“You never told me, either.”</p><p>He stared, dumbfounded.  She bit his lip in soft retaliation.  Red behind his eyes.  His cock flexed into her hand.  “No,” he agreed, palm braced on blankets.  He used the other to stroke up her thigh, up beneath the hem of her chemise.  “Because I never thought you might—” fingers paused, he laughed, breathy.  “Some pair we make.”</p><p>She grinned against his lips, wobbling, hesitating.  “I’m glad that we make it.”</p><p>There was no time for sorrow.  Less for shame. </p><p>The whole of Mor Dhona would feel this bed quake.</p><p>“Samantha,” he exhaled, fingertips hooked at the brim of her stocking.  Her fist cupped around him, warm and obliging.  G’raha left reckless nibbles in paths down her neck.  “Might I—”</p><p>She spread her legs in invitation—moved to find his ear.  “Touch me.”</p><p>A low sound tumbled from his throat.  His pulse, fast and hot, hung hard in her hand.  His own roamed and roved beneath her rumpled smallclothes, up to dampened pantalettes.  “Gods,” he grunted, two fingers stroking in-between.  A twinge in his eye.  He hissed—<em>not now, Allag—</em></p><p>Not while decrypting this endmost enigma. </p><p>Unsteady knuckles eased past flimsy cloth.  She arced to fill his palm.  His fingers slow-sinking in satin, she shuddered and moaned.  G’raha drowned in the sound, submerged in scarlet yearning—lost in thirst for consummation.  Profanity pressed at his lips.  He gulped it back; stroked her resolutely and breathed past nauseous pressure.  His cock throbbed.  “Twelve, I want to—” hells, he would spill from the hunger itself; the dire, desperate longing to be buried, whole body hers for interment.  He bucked into her hand.  “Would you let me be <em>inside—?”</em></p><p>An onze of dread.  A galling trickle down his backbone.  Ice spiked through his mind; <em>you fool of a scholar—</em></p><p>But then—</p><p>“Yes,” came her trembling whisper.  And he shrank away as she lifted her chemise; unlaced her last ties.  Dull rushing filled his skull as he observed her; his goddess, lit by candlelight, bared of all but picked black stockings, knees apart—<em>so divine—</em>flushed face nervous, timidly watching.</p><p>She reached for him with both hands, eyes wide. </p><p><em>Anticipation.</em> </p><p>“But—” her breath caught.  A hitch in his belly.  “Please go slow.”</p><p>White noise.  Ears hot.  He braced his palm at the base of his arousal, as though to pen himself back.  “Yes.”  Mouth dry, nerves taut and strident.  “Yes.  Of course.”  He held his breath and swung his frame into her touch—melted into the dell of her legs.  Long limbs folded to match them together, and though he might be shorter … now, front to front and chest to chest …</p><p>Peak to shivering valley, they fit.</p><p>He wrapped her in ravenous arms.</p><p><em>Oh—</em>he could <em>feel her,</em> soft on the ache of his prick.  His hips pushed helplessly for friction as she worked him free of his shirt.  Warm hands caught on his shoulders, thighs bent to bracket his hips—</p><p> </p><hr/><p>✧ ☄ ☽</p><p> </p><p>“Raha,” she huffed.</p><p>No time for doubt or regret.</p><p>Let the whole of Mor Dhona bear witness.</p><p>The girth of him fell hot on her skin, frotting gently to tempt her.  She felt ablaze.  He trembled coarsely, face to her neck, soft red hair smelling of sweat and sweetness and ozone from the Tower.  In the dim amber pall from the candle, his fringe seemed wrought of fire.   </p><p>She moved to stroke lips on his warm, silken ear; kissed the base and earned a fresh sound—hum mixed with low-thrumming rumble; eyes fluttered back to show whites. </p><p><em>I love you.</em>  Her heart felt bloated with truth.  <em>I love you so much that I— </em>“Is this alright?”</p><p>He jerked his chin, aye; lush lips parted on her pulse.  Breath shallow.  “Yes.”  It was a whisper.</p><p>He twisted, and she moved her face to kiss him; sighed into his mouth.  Tongues together, skin to skin—<em>not yet within</em>—it felt already like heaven, like some primeval sin.  His eyes fluttered shut at the taste of her lips, his lust a hard line begging for admission, every drum of his heartbeat a spellbinding tremor.</p><p>She shifted.  Moved just so, to slip that line lower; to ease the curve of his cockhead <em>just enough to—</em></p><p>His back arched.  The tip brushed against her.  Bumped and flexed to— “Right <em>there—</em>” she angled to assist.  He was panting hard and fast and shaking.  The place she wanted him to enter was physically aching.</p><p>He fumbled one palm between them; took himself in hand to prod and press—slipped—a hiss unintelligible, his teeth on her neck.  A sharp breath, cool on her skin.  “Is this too fast—” </p><p>“No,” she croaked.  Her fingers joined his.  All was wet, mixed with sweat and their slickness.  He moved overhead, his long fringe a veil—his mouth chasing hers, hot and panicked.</p><p>“Sorry,” he gasped, passed through a desperate kiss.</p><p>She stole it from his lips.  “Don’t apologize,” she whispered.  His tip was blunt and wide.  She stroked it against her; watched the knit of his brows, the tortured roll of darkened eyes.</p><p>Tourmaline and garnet. </p><p>“Samantha.”  Her name, a low-thrumming rumble, pelvis following her hands.  She rubbed and coaxed and tried to relax; tried breathing slow and not hasty, deep, and not thin—</p><p>The flare of his cock slipped just in.</p><p>A shift.  A stretch.  His muscles bunched, both hands braced on the mattress.  “Thaliak, <em>shite—</em>” He stiffly exhaled.  Pulse hard and hot in her ears, mouth fallen open, she glanced down the tracts of their barely-met bodies—flushed at the sight.  The width of him strained to connect them, wreathed in tangled auburn-copper—</p><p> </p><hr/><p>☽ ✧ ☾</p><p> </p><p>Hugged by the grip of her, joined, half-engulfed—</p><p>He would spill.</p><p>G’raha was going to come, so hard and so swiftly and—<em>gods, </em>her hips up-tipped.  He sank another steady ilm.  He hardly bothered to stifle the sound in his throat; ugly, abject, starving.</p><p>“Raha,” she groaned, and spread her legs wider.  Hips canted higher, he was swallowed whole inside her, wretched, famished, swollen, hopeful—</p><p>“You took me,” he whispered, cock pulsing.  He pumped his hips once.</p><p><em>Mmm,</em> she whined, and it set him on fire.  Face drawn, mouth slack, he hilted—wanted to remember every movement, every gesture, the way she squirmed and writhed—the way she gripped him, grasped him into hot velvet.</p><p>“Oh <em>Raha—</em>you’re—” her moan was unholy.  She rolled her hips, dragging him in.</p><p>
  <em>Twelve above.</em>
</p><p>He grunted; bottomed out.  The feel of him enfolded so utterly nearly made him see white.  “Stay still,” he panted, his voice cracked and frantic.  “If you move I might—<em>ah—</em>” his prick twitched, too sensitive, <em>impatient.</em>  He groaned, very loudly, face shoved into her neck.  “You feel like <em>nothing else.”</em></p><p>Her body pulsed in syncopation around him. </p><p>
  <em>Not yet, not yet, not yet—</em>
</p><p>“Tell me.”  Sweet anguish, her hands on his back.  She dragged them down to the curve of his backside, raked by the base of his tail, and oh, he was going to <em>come, </em>full inside her<em>—mindless, senseless, witless.</em></p><p>“So good I—<em>ah—</em>want to finish right now.”  He licked a path to her earlobe and kissed it; quaked with the toll to stay still.  “But not before … what you want from me—<em>anything</em>, <em>say it—”</em></p><p>Long limbs hooked him and hips rocked up.  <em>Tight.  </em></p><p>“Take me,” she begged.</p><p>He was defenseless.</p><p>He tested a thrust<em>—</em>and another, and another—</p><p>
  <em>“Oh gods, Raha—please—”</em>
</p><p>She begged him by name, and something inside of him snapped.</p><p>Lips open on her neck, he fucked like she asked.  The air rang with firm, wet slaps.  The wall and the floor and the bedframe complained.  “Say my name,” he panted, and nothing else mattered—only making her <em>feel him, </em>making her<em> never forget.</em></p><p>“Raha,” she pled, bedded breathless.  Air was molten in his throat.  Her legs hugged around him, toes curled, ankles crossed.  “Raha,” she sang—head tossed back, throat exposed, rocked in bliss beneath him.  The finest rapture he could imagine.  “Oh <em>Raha</em>—” and it was a sob.  Her thighs tensed and trembled.  “<em>You’re making me—” </em></p><p>Her back arched hard.  A shout in her mouth.  Both bodies shuddered with sloppy convulsions and he surged forward and collapsed.  Cock jerking, rhythmic, his spasming desperate.  He came, and he <em>came, </em>wolfish panting in his throat.<em>  I love you I love you I love you I—  </em></p><p>“Samantha,” he rumbled and croaked, unsteady hands raking dark, tangled hair.  He kissed her neck, tasted salt; kissed a path to her lips, determined to worship.  In the afterglow, cool drafts in the outpost were balmy. </p><p>Forehead to forehead, reality blurred.</p><p>He purred, and she shivered, labored for air.  He wrapped her more securely in his arms. </p><p>“Raha.”  It came out shallow and cracked, from throes of pleasure, wrung out.  She nuzzled past his temple, and her inhalation quivered.  He rocked and shook above her.  “I’ve—” her nose behind his ear.  “Never felt anything like that before.”</p><p>“Nor I,” he said, warm and hazy.  Her body still gripped him.  He wanted his outline permanently imprinted—to stain her with his weight and shape and mortal traces—his heft, his remnants, his vestige.  He wished she would never be rid of him, never, ever, <em>ever.</em>  G’raha crushed his brow to her neck.  “I never thought—never dreamed you might—” a hoarse breath.  “But you—” Satisfaction made him nauseous again.  “Am I awake, or am I—”</p><p>“Not sleeping.”  Her hands combed the hair on his nape.  “Not yet.”  Her voice was so ragged from passion.  She urged him to move so their noses stroked together.  “But once we do—” she said words that would haunt him for lifetimes.  “Please don’t dream without me.”</p><p>“I’ll be right here,” he breathed.</p><p>And he kissed her, slow and deep.</p><p> </p><p>☄ ☽ ✧ ☾ ☄</p><hr/><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I used this arrangement of "<a href="https://youtu.be/Pdr5GGzrpCY">Corridors of Time</a>" from Chrono Trigger to write this.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0028"><h2>28. Prompt #27: Denouement (G'raha Tia/WoL)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>“Gods in heaven,” she gasped.  She hefted a breath and felt him shudder.</p><p>His voice cracked.  “Better every time.”  He kissed the back of her shoulder.  “Imagine if we started sooner.”</p><p>Another hot grunt on the mattress.  “Wouldn’t’ve had enough time to map the Labyrinth.”</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>18+, NSFW.  Morning after.  Smut fluff, graphic depictions of sex.<br/>Sometimes I'm not sure if details are hot or TOO MUCH, so. Beware.</p><p>Continues from last chapter.  G'raha Tia/WoL, WoL POV.</p><p>Slightly edited.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>✧ ☄ ☽</p><p> </p><p>With a luxuriant stretch, she awakened.</p><p>It took a moment, somehow, to find bearings; a moment to remember—<em>where am I again?</em></p><p>A breath—air caught between humid summer and fresh, cooling autumn.  She tasted dry earth and stale moisture, pressure in her sinuses.  She scrubbed her tongue across her teeth and her leg slipped from the bunk, off the edge, cold past the stretch of flimsy blankets.  </p><p>Another stretch, toes flexed—a hitch of low tension.  She was sore in a way that felt tender; a honeyed ache that yawned with her mouth.  Deep almost-bruises, hollow and sweet, up high between her—</p><p>She shivered.</p><p>
  <em>Oh.</em>
</p><p>Samantha stretched one hand rearward to brush, feather-light, against warm skin taut over muscle—G’raha puffed softly and shifted the plane of his bare body, still behind her.</p><p>She blushed.</p><p>
  <em>We never got dressed.</em>
</p><p>Her back arced, slow and gentle against him, and a soft sound escaped her—not on purpose.  She pulled her lip between teeth and squeezed her thighs together, relishing the twinge, that ache, the raw pleasure she felt just to <em>remember—</em></p><p>
  <em>Last night—</em>
</p><p>A sigh swelled like sugar in her mouth.  A gruff rumble in answer.  “Mmph,” G’raha grumbled, rich voice rough with sleep.  His frame moved to fit at her backside, short and stout but powerful.  Strong forearms trapped her waist.  “Too early.”  His lips were hot on the blade of her shoulder and he pressed himself closer, hands relaxed to slide down her thighs, the stretch of his naked frontside <em>so warm—</em></p><p>In her bones she felt strange and unbearably giddy, bubbling up, effervescent.  Try as she might to deny it— “Good morning,” she sighed, arms bent, hands gripping his elbows, stroking fine hairs on his skin. </p><p>She wanted to kiss every ilm of him.</p><p>Pressed so close, she felt him physically tremble; felt the way his mouth curled into a grin.  “Mm.”  One consonant sounded like music.  His knee stroked the crook of her thigh, shifting their angles, and there at the apex of his legs—there, beneath the curve of her behind, she felt his worldly desire; the fat, solid curve of him, throbbing inexorably to attention. </p><p>His purr was so erotic, she thought she might die.  “Did you have a good night?”</p><p>Her back arched.  He bent to meet it.  She whined for him, and almost barely cared.  “It was so good, Raha,” she admitted.  Another tremble, his whole body; a stutter in the subtle, thrumming rumble that filled her with vibration.  Warmth pulsed from him in waves.  She felt his ribcage move to speak, but caught her wits to interrupt him.  “But if you dare let it go to your head—”</p><p>“Did already,” he breathed.  His mouth was open, warming the nape of her neck, tongue hot, canines gentle. </p><p>Flushed red and glad he could not see it, she barked.  “Keep your ego checked, then,” she rasped, and he shifted.  The slant of his prick nudged to slide between her legs, up, up until—a dry gasp from her mouth, half his name, half a whimper.  The tip nestled right where she was sore from him already. </p><p>He sucked a bruise into her skin.  The arms around her tensed, and his cock twitched to prod.  “I doubt—” teeth, sharp and subtle on her skin, “—my ego will <em>ever recover.”</em></p><p>She grunted a chuckle.  Words were hard to form when she was so distracted.  “Raha.”  She sounded ridiculous, breathy, like a mistress from some bodice-ripping bawdy penny-novel.  But his lips were so soft, his hold so <em>demanding, </em>and that hot, patient pressure from his— “Ah!” </p><p>A shallow cant of his hips, just to tempt, and she felt wetness pearled at his tip, slippery against her own obscene slickness.  This time, she keened.  “Oh <em>hells—please </em>don’t tease me—”</p><p>His hand dove down between them, taking the base to aim and guide, so eager, and—</p><p>Breathlessly.  “Do you want me to—”</p><p>“Inside,” she begged him, writhing, and an ugly groan left her throat as— <em>“Raha!”</em></p><p>He hissed her name as he pushed in.  “Why are you so—<em>mm—</em>” hot, labored panting at her nape.  “Gods.”  He bottomed out despite her body’s tightness, still swollen from before.  Connected, rocked by the force of each other’s breathing, they lay for a moment in shocked consummation again.  He rubbed his nose and lips down her skin, up again, and— “Twelve help me.”  A throb of him inside her.  “I never—never, <em>never—</em>” a bite.  “Want to get out of this bed.”</p><p>She huffed a laugh.  Lust and adoration obliterated her mind.   “Stay, then.” </p><p>His teeth on her nape.  A hard shove of his hips.  She gasped and rode back on his shaft to feel the full width of him, aching body gripping his thickness.  “Raha,” she choked and writhed.</p><p>A violent pulse from his cock, his mouth hot and open.  “I love how much you—” he grunted and thrust, “—<em>gods</em>—” he panted.  Lush, slick sounds in a slow, relentless rhythm.  “Is this how badly you <em>wanted me?”</em></p><p>Another ugly whimper.  What was the harm in confessing it?</p><p>“I—” she arched her back to nock him far inside.  “Think I wanted you all summer—” </p><p>The groan in his throat snagged and stoppered.  He exhaled and moved in earnest, erasing the space between their bodies.  “How,” his wanton whisper on her skin, cock sliding back and forth.  “Tell me—”</p><p>“Just like this,” she breathed.  One hand dipped between her legs, fingertips pressed over sensitive flesh; pressed lower to feel how he stroked from within, building sweet friction and tension.</p><p>He was panting, hot and fast.  “I wish you—<em>ah—</em>” a kiss on her nape.  He spoke so softly.  “I still wish you—” his teeth on the back of her neck.  “Told me long before.”</p><p>She squirmed.  “I tried, but—” she gasped.  White-hot, urgent pressure.  “Oh Raha, <em>don’t stop—</em>” and she canted back against him; arched to feel every dimension, rocked to pull him all the way in—</p><p>G’raha cursed hardly ever—much preferred his florid, erudite statements—but quiet profanity spilled from his lips.  He moved, firm but halted, hips jerking in desperate stutters.  “I never want to stop.”  His voice was hushed.  The animal smacking of skin.  “I love being inside you—”</p><p>Pleasure, winding and blinding.  “You feel so good,” she cried, tensed around him.</p><p>He moaned, bright and anguished.  And then her front was pressed to the mattress, strong hands gripping her hips.  His weight above, tucking her down into the pallet.  He groaned as he came, low and raw, and it pushed her far over the edge.  Stars exploded in her eyes, static rushing past her temples.</p><p>His slackened body draped limp upon her, she huffed against the blankets—sandalwood, candle wax, sex.  “Gods in heaven,” she gasped.  She hefted a breath and felt him shudder.</p><p>His voice cracked.  “Better every time.”  He kissed the back of her shoulder.  “Imagine if we started sooner.”</p><p>Another hot grunt on the mattress.  “Wouldn’t’ve had enough time to map the Labyrinth.”</p><p>His hysterical laughter slipped him free.  She cupped a hand between her legs to catch the mess.  “Is that why fate conspired against us,” he managed, “To ensure we were focused on the Tower?”</p><p>She propped on her flank to catch sight of him.  Ears flicked forward, red hair mussed, his face was glowing and relaxed, every one of his features in beautiful relief.  His eyes twinkled and gleamed and her captive heart fluttered.  “So far it’s been <em>very </em>distracting,” she muttered, trying to scramble as horizontally as possible toward the edge of the bunk.  He crawled after and vaulted past her.</p><p>“Let me—”</p><p>And she watched his bare arse disappear beyond the partition, tail swishing wildly.  He was back in a flash with a clean, damp rag, tossing the fringe from his eyes—blushing bright pink when he noticed her stare, roaming slowly down his body.  She had seen him almost-naked several times, very close to it before; but last night and this morning she let herself openly look.</p><p>Freckles flecked him in stardusts all over, especially the expanses sunlight touched.  But there were charming speckles over even his palest, most intimate reaches—his stomach, his thighs, the vee to his groin.  She met his eyes and took the offered implement.  “Thank you.”  And then it was her turn to blush red and ruddy, for when she stood, her legs violently wobbled.  She tried to ignore the proud heat of his attention as she shoved the cloth between her legs and shambled for cover in the corner.</p><p>She could almost taste his urge to make a joke.  “Whatever you’re thinking,” she groused.  “Don’t you dare say it.”</p><p>He laughed breathlessly, brightly.  “My thoughts were harmless, I assure you.”</p><p>“Harmless,” she grumbled, finishing her covert task, “Says the voyeur.”</p><p>Another sunny chuckle.  “So said the pot to the kettle.”</p><p>“More like a bubbling cauldron,” she muttered.  “Which makes you the singing thing full of hot air."</p><p>This time, his giggling was helpless.</p><p> </p><p>☾ ☄ ✧</p>
<hr/><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>seriously barely made it this time.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0029"><h2>29. Prompt #28: Irenic (5.3+ G'raha Tia & Ishgard Sandwich)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>5.3 spoilers.</p><p> </p><p>Eyes of vivid scarlet slid to meet a pair the pale of ice.  “Are you inviting me into your bedroom, Ser Aymeric?”</p><p>“Indeed,” without missing a beat, fine black eyebrows lifted high.  “Do forgive me for such an untoward proposition.”</p><p>“I believe,” said Alphinaud loudly, “That is my cue to wait downstairs for Tataru.”</p><p>A positively outraged noise from Samantha.  “Oh, gods and hells—we are dressing him for a formal occasion!"</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Slice of life, continues almost directly from "<a href="#section0025">Beam</a>" of this fill collection, with reference to "<a href="#section0017">Lucubration.</a>"</p><p>I'm sorry for skipping around so much, but the muse wants what it wants.</p><p>G'raha POV.  G'raha &amp; Ishgard Sandwich (Aymeric, Samantha, Estinien), with a hint of Alphinaud.</p><p>Unedited.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>☽ ✧ ☾</p><p> </p><p>“Ah.”  Hangers clattered as Ser Aymeric paused from his substantial progress.  “Must be someplace else.”</p><p>Constrained as they were by the limits of time, their jolly band moved from room to room in hot pursuit, pacing fast through winding hallways, rummaging deep in all manner of wardrobes and trunks; visitant chambers patterned with charming motifs of fleur-de-lis and Coerthan flowers, some of which G’raha recognized from his excruciating historical ventures. </p><p>When juxtaposed with the irenic context of current surroundings, not to mention newfound companions, reminiscences of the Eighth Umbral Calamity were becoming increasingly distressing to remember. </p><p>“You are welcome to sojourn here any night,” Ser Aymeric was saying while they walked, smoothing back a wayward curl and marking his guest’s less-than-covert attentions.  “Though assuredly my lady has made as much clear.”</p><p>A laugh escaped G’raha, half breath and nervous bark.  “Abundantly.”</p><p>Behind them, a sound of indignation, followed by a hiss of questionable origin.  G’raha glanced over his shoulder to find Alphinaud wincing away from a drive-by midsection pinch, the pincers in question belonging to one Rosalyn Samantha, bringer of Darkness and Light, purveyor of gloom and entertainment alike.  “The offer has long been extended,” she drawled, hefting her white-and-gold skirts in one hand and ignoring her snow-haired quarry's victimized glare.  “But while he demurs <em>my</em> careful invitations,” and it was her turn to glare, then, at the justly indicted, “Raha seems to find no impediment in calling upon <em>other occupants </em>of the building in the middle of the night.”</p><p>G’raha could <em>feel </em>Ser Aymeric’s eyes twinkling down at him, and a furious blush crowded quickly up his neck.  He cleared his throat; forced his pace to remain slow and stately.  “It should come as no surprise, to any of the party—” he allowed his gaze to fix upon Samantha, “That I find your Lord Speaker a remarkable raconteur—and very pleasant company, besides.”</p><p>Leveilleur was rolanberry red.  “Twelve forfend.”</p><p>Samantha paused mid-stride to pinch him again.</p><p>Seemingly immune to the antics and assumptions, Ser Aymeric leaned down to speak to G’raha directly.  “Your much-appreciated kindnesses aside, I must beg your pardon, Master G’raha.  I believe the apparel I seek might be sequestered in my private closet.”</p><p>Eyes of vivid scarlet slid to meet a pair the pale of ice.  “Are you inviting me into your bedroom, Ser Aymeric?”</p><p>“Indeed,” without missing a beat, fine black eyebrows lifted high.  “Do forgive me for such an untoward proposition.”</p><p>“I believe,” said Alphinaud loudly, “That is my cue to wait downstairs for Tataru.”</p><p>A positively outraged noise from Samantha.  “Oh, gods and hells—<em>we are dressing him for a formal occasion—” </em></p><p>But Leveilleur was gone, a blur of white and finery, and thus they were three.  The party approached the host’s quarters and filed within.  The lord disappeared into the depths of the chamber, the room itself dark-walled and lit dimly.  The place was spotlessly clean—neat and upholstered in shades of grey and blue, bordering close upon white.  The boudoir was furnished with hearth and armchairs and settee—a desk stacked high with tomes and parchment—a wide bed with the tall canopy pulled to hide it.  And here and there, on the desk, in a corner, G’raha spotted flashes of pink and coral and red; pots and cuttings of roses, subliminal details upon which he wished, quite intently, not to dwell. </p><p>“This should do nicely,” the lord of the house was finally saying, presenting a broad coat hanger bedecked with a smallish suit jacket.  Though somewhat aged, the fine fabric was kept in good condition; deep charcoal blue painstakingly protected and preserved.</p><p>A loud sound of guttural abhorrence.  “Fury, not <em>that one.”</em></p><p>With incredible precision, Aymeric aimed a deadpan glance across the room. </p><p>After a breath, a long body oozed into view—Estinien, exuding from behind the wide baroque back of the hearthside divan.  Long mane disheveled in tousled pale tangles, dressed in naught but a half-unlaced nightshirt and worn linen trousers, he loomed to his feet.  “Fetch the one you wore to that equinoctial hootenanny back when,” he suggested, twirling one dismissive hand—the <em>right one, </em>G’raha noted; the one he knew very well was corrupted by Nidhogg.  Bereft of the esoterica of the Tower, he was stripped both of truesight and his reservoir of aether.  As such, he could no longer so simply perceive it—no longer <em>see,</em> as he once had in Norvrandt, the fascinating consequences of Estinien’s fell magick.  But still, to his eyes, there was a faint eldritch ripple surrounding those fingers; a distortion, a shimmer, a gossamer film, much like mirages, or oil stretched thin.</p><p>Borel raised his eyebrows.  “An excellent suggestion.”  And he was back at the mouth of the closet again.</p><p>Estinien slunk across the chamber like some moonlit, ominous specter, beelining toward Samantha.  Without a single glance in his direction, she moved away—a magnet repulsed; two like charges, arranged in unending duet.  Then, loud and abrupt, a buzzing, mechanical chirrup filled the room.  The pale-haired slinker paused in his pursuit.  Still ignoring Estinien, she plunged her hand into glittering golden skirts—retrieved a linkpearl from some unseen pocket.  “Yes?” Her face broke out into a smile—<em>breathtaking— </em>“One moment,” —and she was rushing from the bedroom in a hush of gown and feathered train, pocketing the device, muttering under her breath.  G’raha tried not to openly ogle, but how could he resist, when such dazzling arcana passed before his spellbound stare?</p><p>A gentle touch on his shoulder nearly caused him to startle.  He willed his tail not to bristle and glanced up to find Borel, smiling serenely, fresh old suit coat in hand.  “Will this do, my friend?”</p><p>A sudden weight on his head.  “Oh, <em>bless it</em>, not <em>that</em> one,” Estinien grouched, resting his rightmost cage of fingers across G’raha’s scalp—carefully, somehow, circumventing the ears.  It was incredibly unsettling to be, quite literally, held in the palm of that wyrm-accursed hand.  “The other one.  You know the one.”</p><p>Aymeric stared at Estinien blandly.  “Words, I implore you.”</p><p>Wyrmblood scoffed and snorted in a way that was unnervingly familiar.  “The older—oh, buggering <em>codswallop—</em>” He twirled his free forelimb in a wide-curving arc.  “Put the lad in that—” a pause in the progress of his crescent-shaped gesticulation.  He furrowed his brow.  “’Twas a mole-looking brown, aye?  The old autumn jacket that Amboise despised—” and he played at a feminine timbre, “—<em>no castoff livery for any son of mine—</em>” before snorting at the apery.  “With the what-the-whatsit—”</p><p>“Waistcoat,” Aymeric supplied, and Estinien nodded, missing no breath of cadence.</p><p>“—mother-of-pearl bit I liked.”</p><p>A nearly incomprehensible dispatch was being exchanged.  G’raha latched on to one phrase.  “<em>Mole-looking?”</em></p><p>Lost in thought, Aymeric scrubbed his thumb and forefinger across his bottom lip, eyes vaguely squinted.  “That leaves the trousers and cravat—” and he was back to the closet again.</p><p>Fingertips clasped gently on G’raha’s head.  Past the incredibly competent glamour, those nails still felt ever-so-slightly like <em>talons.</em>  “Trust me,” Estinien rumbled, ruffling his hair—inspecting a bit of it between his forefingers.</p><p>G’raha glanced up through mussed copper forelocks.  “I admit to being too bewildered to fathom reacting any way else.”</p><p>That earned a dark laugh from Estinien, and his silent answer:</p><p>A fierce smirk with docile fangs.</p><p> </p><p>☽ ✧ ☾</p>
<hr/><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I love them I love them I love them I love theM</p><p>I have a picture I'm illustrating of this scene as well :&gt;</p><p>ONCE AGAIN thanks to the lovely Nightmist for being a constant source of enablement regarding all things 1. fashion and 2. Estinien (/Aymeric), in this case all at once.  Absolutely cannot wait to draw one ginger cat in that mole brown suit.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0030"><h2>30. Prompt #29: Paternal (Aymeric/WoL/Estinien, the Ishgard Sandwich)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The third party scoffed and cavalierly handed her a glass of wine.  “Does his ceaseless slobbering not make you sick?”</p><p>A nervous laugh spilled from her lips.  She shook her head and tried, just as coolly, to reject the offered libation. </p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>And now for something completely different, peacetime future AU Ishgard Sandwich,</p><p>I started this WIP several months ago (in January 2020, but the original idea was brainstormed on NOVEMBER FIFTH 2019 wow) and added some flourish today because I simply don't have enough time for a fresh fill.  As such I think it's intact as humorously fluffy slice-of-life, if perhaps not as packed with theme and symbolism as I would typically strive to achieve.  Pray forgive me.</p><p>Warnings for vague implication of pregnancy and nausea/food intolerance/unintentional weight loss during 5.0.</p><p>WoL POV.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>✧ ☄ ☽</p><p> </p><p>Dinner was a roast and highland pie, recipe courtesy of Cassius, enhanced by Estinien’s abundant farmhouse opinions.  “I know this might stun you,” she muttered, sarcastic, balancing heat-aspected aether as she used quilted mitts to pluck up a hot dish.  “But I <em>am </em>entirely capable of cooking without supervision.”</p><p>Said supervisor tsk tsked.  “So you contend,” Wyrmblood grumbled, pushing back one stray wisp of hair, squinting at the browning.  He flipped his long pale plait behind his shoulder and snatched the scalding pan in his bare hand—luckily his right, which was, in fact, quite resistant to inferno.</p><p>“His surveillance has tended to serve you quite well,” came Borel’s provision.  He was looming up behind her.  A delicate kiss on her nape.  “Where, indeed, would you be, had our fair hellhound not interceded with Elidibus?”</p><p>Adding garnish to the roast was a task made near impossible by Aymeric’s adamant attention.  “Stay back.”  She tried to smack him away with a potholder.  “And dead, of course, but that’s hardly the point.”</p><p>Estinien snorted.  “As you see,” he agreed, fixing the steaming pie to his own final specifications, “Mine is a much-needed undertaking.  For the sake of the realm, I shall not lapse—honor bound to reconnoiter the <em>flawed and fabled champion.”</em></p><p>Samantha was caged in the fold of two gluttonous arms, wide hands tracking paths that decidedly verged on unseemly.  “Aymeric,” she spat, half gasp, half laugh, swatting him away.  “Let <em>go of me.”</em></p><p>“Impossible,” he declared, pressing closer.  His right thumb drew a circle down the slope of her belly, his left paused at the curve of her hip.  “Not when peacetime agrees with you <em>so very well.”</em>  His voice was a purr, velvet lips unrepentant where they mapped and kissed her neck.  “Besides.  The meal can always be delayed.”</p><p>Estinien snorted.  “Know that <em>you made him like this</em>,” he announced, hip cocked against the counter.  “Scared the poor bloody blighter senseless with your godsdamned shriveling in Norvrandt.”  His Coerthan plainclothes bunched appealingly at his haunches as he poured three glasses of wine, shaking his head.  “Keep your bones hidden better the next time instead of <em>withering twig-thin.”</em></p><p>“I wasn’t exactly fond of it myself,” she harped, aiming a glare at him. </p><p>The Hound flashed a wolfish grin back as the Bastard hummed his agreement; continued smoothing greedy hands down her flanks.  The Lord of the House Borel grabbed staunchly to pull her back against him.  “Holy Twelve,” hissed the Lady, glaring, this time, over her shoulder.  Aymeric leered down at her quite pointedly as he sealed them tight together, her backside pressed against his increasingly insistent pelvis.</p><p>The third party scoffed and cavalierly handed her a glass of wine.  “Does his <em>ceaseless slobbering </em>not make you sick?”</p><p>A nervous laugh spilled from her lips.  She shook her head and tried, just as coolly, to reject the offered libation.  The words she planned to speak got caught in her throat, and she swallowed sudden dryness, swiping her tongue across her lips.  With a twinge of horror, she felt a shiver within her aetherical center—a nudge of Estinien down along the thread—and checked to make sure her arcane ramparts were in place. </p><p>Her external captor, meanwhile, was finding fresh places to kiss her.  “Unlike certain <em>other individuals,</em> my lady has an appreciation for open affection.”  She launched an accusative glance at him, and he corrected himself.  “Within reason.”</p><p>Lengthening silence from the third.  Samantha looked back to find Estinien less-than-relaxed, squinting from her face to the brimming wineglass, then back again.  Realization dawned, lightning-fast, in the depths of those dark, discerning eyes.</p><p>She stared. </p><p>He stared back intently.</p><p>The hush bid Borel to resurface, blinking owlishly between them.  “Pray tell me what unspoken understanding is unfolding.”</p><p>Was that a bead of sweat on Estinien’s neck?  His swarthy skin seemed to go pale.  “Samantha—”</p><p>She wet her lips again.  “I—”</p><p>Wyrmblood was holding two glasses of wine, ready to share, overfull. </p><p>In the passing of an instant, dark eyes bulging wide, he lifted one to his lips—slammed back the drink like it was naught but a thimbleful of liquor and chased it with the other.  Then his heavy thighs flexed beneath the seams of his trousers, winding back in preparation to sprint.</p><p>There was a loud cracking sound as ice sprang to shackle his ankles, freezing him in place.</p><p>Estinien roared in horrified frustration as Aymeric, open lips paused at her shoulder, cleared his throat.  “In the sight of heaven above us,” he rumbled, low in his chest.  “And the name of Halone, why—”</p><p>Her voice cracked around the word she blurted out.  <em>“Expecting—”</em></p><p>“Nay,” bellowed the dragon, tendons straining in his neck.</p><p>“Aye,” shrieked the witch.</p><p>Estinien flipped his fallen hair out of his reddening face and growled.  <em>“How?”</em></p><p>“You know<em>—how—!”</em></p><p>Behind her, Aymeric choked loudly on air.  “One moment,” he wheezed, catching up.  “<em>What?”</em></p><p>Samantha cleared her throat and tried again.  “I’m—”</p><p>This time the word completely <em>failed </em>to come out.</p><p>With every drop of command and charisma he could muster, Aymeric spoke again.  “Are you saying—what I <em>think</em>—you are trying to say?”</p><p>“Yes,” she croaked, and there was another loud crack as Estinien freed both frosty feet. </p><p>“<em>So help me,</em>” spluttered the runner, winding back up.  Aymeric snatched him firmly by the neck as Samantha finally managed to cough up the declaration.</p><p>“I am expecting.”</p><p> </p><p>☾ ☄ ✧</p>
<hr/><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>As always, thanks to my dear Sophie for allowing me to scream in her general direction about babyfic any time the spirit strikes me; it is thanks to our conversations that this idea exists!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0031"><h2>31. Prompt #30: Splinter (5.3+, Ishgard Sandwich + G'raha Tia, & Scions)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Her heart was racing already.  It began to race faster.  “Vassalage seems a far cry from Lord Exarch.”</p><p>G’raha braced his full weight against the wall and crossed his ankles, close enough to share static.  “So it would seem.”  His long copper fringe fell into his eyes.  “But that old man was ever a villein—thrall to the whims of his heart, ever after.”</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Continues from "<a href="#section0029">Irenic.</a>"</p><p>At this point in the timeline (5.3+), Samantha and Aymeric are openly in a relationship.  Samantha, Aymeric, and Estinien are in a long-term polyamorous triad, but this is still a secret to everyone but the Manor Borel, Count Edmont (and probably Artoirel) and the Scions.  Everyone is aware of Samantha's history with and extant feelings for G'raha (and vice versa), and every development between any party is immediately and openly communicated (except maybe to Ishgard at large).  All this to say, everyone is honest with each other.</p><p>5.3 spoilers.  WoL POV.  Gently NSFW?</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>✧ ☄ ☽</p><p> </p><p>If the Warrior of Darkness and Light had learned any one thing in her years as a hero, it was this simple fact:</p><p>Riling Tataru Taru was not a wise course of action.</p><p>The diminutive Scion was pacing.  She shrugged on her fluffy Ishgardian mantle and crossed her arms, jerking her chin toward the massive grandfather clock in the manor vestibule.  “What in the hells are those lot of flibbertigibbets doing?”  She huffed with frustration.  “We are going to be <em>late!”</em></p><p>Samantha’s brow furrowed and she muttered aloud.  “I assume still getting Raha properly <em>dressed,</em> but—” Tataru’s eyes flicked to hers, terrifyingly probing.  With a mote of perhaps the same sort of panic that Alphinaud—or dare she say, G’raha—felt when referring to Krile, she leapt half up the stairs and strained her aether to shout.  “Aymeric!”  The sound rang down the hall.  <em>Estinien!</em>  A trickle rippled out through the filament between them.  “Time is running out!”</p><p>A pause for a moment.  Then a pressure in her ears; the distinct burn of scorching ash in her sinuses.  <em>Coop your draft fowl, woman—</em></p><p>Someone pacing quickly down the hallway.  Aymeric, spick and span and openly abashed, poking into sight.  “I am to blame,” he announced.  “Start on without us—I can escort Master G’raha.”</p><p>She blinked and craned down toward Tataru.  “Aymeric says he’s escorting Raha.”</p><p>A tiny, outraged sound.  “Fine!  Let him have his political uproar, then—does G’raha have a linkpearl?”</p><p>Samantha plucked hers from her skirt pocket and flicked it to life, fizzing her aether through the last attuned channel.  Tataru’s crisp, affronted voice again, echoing both downstairs and on the other end.  “Are you giving him <em>that one?”</em></p><p>Samantha launched up onto the landing and strode to Aymeric—passed him the device—was snatched by the wrist into a quick, sizzling kiss—“You are a vision tonight, my enchantress”—her barking laugh in answer—and she was released in a twirl to whirl herself back down the stairs.</p><p>“Promise not to torment him too much,” she shouted.</p><p>The thunder of chuckle within did not belong to her. </p><p>
  <em>Promises and commitments were never mine to make.</em>
</p><p>She scowled as she galloped back down into the vestibule—<em>then let me make one for you, dreadful creature—</em>braced herself at the railing before plowing into an unexpected Alphinaud.  “Sorry,” and her focus was distracted again by the feeling of clawed, righthanded fingers, raking slowly down her nape.</p><p>
  <em>The witch would enter a wyrm bargain to defend the little lad?</em>
</p><p>Said witch was distracted by a blast of Leveilleurian derision.  “Good gods Samantha,” and her eyes swam back to find Alphinaud staring in a mixture of interest and mild revulsion.  “Are you talking to Estinien with your—” he struggled for words.  “Aetherbond again?”</p><p>She knew her nose was red.  She could feel the heat and itch of it.  “Maybe,” she grunted, storming to the cloak rack.  <em>Looks can be deceiving, wicked beast.</em>  The occultist shoved herself beneath fleeces and scarf and heavy layers, huddling into her cowl.  <em>But what be the demands of the foul dragon?</em></p><p>A satisfied thrum low inside her—and a series of <em>filthy visualizations.</em></p><p>Face hot as fire, she thrust open the door and trundled out into sprinkling ice, followed by Alphinaud and Tataru.<em>  Vile, </em>she hissed down the thread.<em>  Abhorrent.</em></p><p><em>Sin begets sin, </em>purred the devil.  <em>Let the wages of sin be sin itself.</em></p><p>She huffed a white breath into the air.  <em>Since when was it a sin to ask you to be nice?</em></p><p>Tataru was shoving her linkpearl into Samantha’s hand.  “You can take care of this,” she said, matter-of-fact.  “I will have too much to attend to with the—” a double-take of her face.  “Samantha why in heaven do you look like you’re about to combust?”</p><p>“Estinien,” she grumbled, setting her jaw.</p><p>Innocence, cheeky and contrived.  <em>Aye?</em></p><p>Her nostrils flared.  <em>Stay kind to him and I promise—</em></p><p>She sent him an image of her own, this time; the master bedroom, her body spread out by the hearth, blue sash binding her wrists at his mercy, Aymeric watching from the shadows.  <em>I will be the definition of transgression.</em></p><p>The thread between them shuddered—<em>as you wish.</em></p><p>And went dim.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>The symposium was a thoroughly highborn affair.</p><p>That is to say, of course, that it was <em>boring.</em>  Barring the promise of the imminent reception, Samantha was struggling.  Half-through her second glass of lush imbibement, she perched beneath a column in the corner hoping to hide; or evade at least <em>some </em>measure of prying eyes.  Tataru was gone, flitting and chattering, Alphinaud stolen off to some gossip or other by a beaming Emmanellain de Fortemps—<em>looking positively dazzling, old girl—</em>and oddly, there was no sight yet of Aymeric or G’raha, no chirping of the linkpearl to advise her besides.</p><p>She sighed, another spicy red sip in her mouth.  <em>Figures.</em></p><p>Then a person sidled up beside her, very pointed, very <em>sudden, </em>might and aura stirring the air.</p><p>
  <em>Quill feathers.  Sandalwood.  Magick.</em>
</p><p>Brows lifted, she armed herself with a quip—looked down past half-shuttered lashes, beyond the thin brim of her wineglass, and—</p><p>Nearly choked to death.</p><p>In the bright depths of his scarlet eyes, pupils narrowed to slits, mirth transmuted into concern.  “Stars in heaven.”  G’raha took her wineglass; transported it aside.  He placed a comforting hand on her forearm.  “It was not my intention to <em>scare you.”</em> </p><p>“You—” She gulped several times to catch her breath and stared down at him, dumbfounded.  “Not <em>scared,” </em>she coughed out.  Dizzying heat prickled up to her cheeks, a blush of déjà vu beneath the painted rouge.  Oh, he was <em>handsome </em>in that aged Coerthan suit—soft pastel cedar with pearly white waistcoat, which fit him quite well despite not being tailored.  From his right shoulder draped a sash of matching white, patterned faintly with the Borel fleur-de-lis.</p><p>Fallen leaves, fallen snow.</p><p>She cleared her throat.  “Raha, you look <em>lovely.”</em> </p><p>It gave her no small measure of satisfaction to see his nose go red beneath the freckles, and he bowed, perhaps, to hide it; genuflected graceful and serene.  His blazing plait was tied with a shiny white ribbon—a matching cravat—a creamy pale rose bloom pinned at his lapel. </p><p>Her hand moved up in reflex, finding the identical blossoms fastened in her hair.  “Did you—”</p><p>“At Ser Aymeric’s suggestion, I confess,” G’raha acknowledged.  Face ruddy, one dimple notched his cheek as he grinned up at her, lopsided.  “But what better way to show fealty than to be festooned in your roses?”</p><p>The heat in her cheeks was somehow worse and worse.  Hungry for relief, she leaned upon the cool stone of the column and quietly smoldered.  “Does that make me the lord, then, and you the humble vassal?”</p><p>He slipped up to prop against the wall beside.  “This should come as no surprise,” and he bent a breath closer.  His tail flicked her leg, stirring her gold-bedecked, white-feathered skirts.  “But I fear such was always the case.” </p><p>Her senses were filled with the nostalgia of his scent—<em>exactly the same.</em>  No strange pressure of Allag, aether both ozone and sunlight; no dim crush of Azys Lla.  She hummed in thought to distract herself from his proximity, which was almost painfully magnetic. </p><p>Somehow, now that he was really <em>G’raha again—not that he wasn’t before, but—</em></p><p>Her heart was racing already.  It began to race faster.  “Vassalage seems a far cry from Lord Exarch.”</p><p>G’raha braced his full weight against the wall and crossed his ankles, close enough to share static.  “So it would seem.”  His long copper fringe fell into his eyes.  “But that old man was ever a villein—thrall to the whims of his heart, ever after.”  The soft thump of his tail on stone and mortar; the sweep of it, again, along her skirts.  “Ancient whims though they might have been.”</p><p>Her eyes tracked across the crowded room, but saw nothing past the blur; nothing past the rush of blood and reminiscence in her vision—the certainty that, no matter how many times, in how many manners he said it, she would never completely believe him.  “It was cruel of him,” she rasped, “To enslave himself so readily to fate.  To let his whims be thus splintered.”</p><p>He was so near.  She could feel the heat of his body.  “Oh, but he was crueler still,” and he tipped his head minutely to the side.  On her shoulder, the subtlest brush of red hair and warm velvet ear.  “For amid his fever-dreams and waking phantasmagorias, that fool also abandoned the one he most fiercely adored.”</p><p>A stutter skipped and fluttered in her chest.  “The way I heard the fable,” her voice was faded, almost silence, “He hardly gave himself a choice.”</p><p>It was lucky that they were eclipsed by the shadows—lucky that the column half hid them from view.  Lucky, because if any one of the nattering clotheshorses gathered in that room happened to glimpse G’raha’s lips on her shoulder—levin-fast though the gesture was passed—it would have been the talk of Ishgard for an epoch.  “A fool,” he breathed.  “In thrall to the caprices of fate and a light-aspected goddess.”</p><p>Her throat was closing, but <em>hells damn it—</em>this was a dare, and if she stopped talking now—</p><p>“You keep calling the Exarch a helot,” she managed, hoarse around the edges.  “But I was taught he was a prince.”  She swallowed hard.  “A beautiful prince, once, full of song and laughter—sovereign heir to some prehistoric dominion, cursed from the first to one day slumber in that tower.”</p><p>She felt the shift in his energy.  Hidden, past layers of skirts befringed in glimmering feathers, he snatched her hand—the first to surrender.</p><p>
  <em>Triumph.</em>
</p><p>G’raha stroked her palm with claws buffed and blunt.  “You do know what they say about sleeping curses,” and his whisper itself was a purr; a soft, fragile thing held between them.</p><p>“What,” she croaked.  A flare ascended her neck.  She wove their fingers tight together.  “That torch-bearing sorceresses cast them?”</p><p>His breath on her shoulder was warm, the hush of his voice rich and resonant.  “Forgive me this liberty—” and the air around them shimmered—subtle rainbows misting over the vapor of a river.  The shade that veiled them deepened and darkened.  She knew this spell.  Their presence was not so much hidden as glamoured so that seeking eyes would slide them over.</p><p>Her heart was pounding.  “I know this magick,” she said, voice kept low and only for him.  She gripped his palm tight.  “Is this how you would reveal yourself to me, you creaking Allagan vassal?”</p><p>The full length of his flank pressed up to her side.  “I want to hear more about the prince,” he rumbled, lips a grin against her skin, soft mouth at her shoulder.  She bent to touch hers to the autumn-red crown of his head.  His fragrance, so crisp, like a warm summer sunset, like dusk’s first and gentlest rustlings—</p><p>“He owed me a lesson on curses, I believe.”  </p><p>“Ah.”  His breath, hot and heady as liquor.  “Something or other about true love’s kiss.”  He relinquished her hand to nock his at her waist, and his nearness prickled through her, sunny and cleansing.</p><p>She slouched into his grip.  “Can a love left untold be called, really, <em>true?”</em>  Her hand combed through his fiery mane.  He closed his eyes and nuzzled into the contact, long auburn lashes fanned above his freckled cheeks.</p><p>“That calls to mind another folk tale,” and he turned his face; rubbed his lips down her palm to her wrist, kissing gently.  “The myth of the odd-eyed kit and the hedge witch.”  Those eyes, now both vivid crimson, opened to pin her.  The pomp and glitter of the ballroom reflected inside them, flecks of stardust, gold-carmine. </p><p>Paths of life combine for brief seasons of change—some with the wicks to blend into twin flames.  Still more remain sparks never coaxed to kindle ablaze.  She aped at Sharlayan jargon.  “They were wrought of the same holy matter that summer—two shards of stardust plucked from one primordial night.  Drawn together for the matching facets in their hearts—”</p><p>His stare roved her face, rapt, captivated.  “Double stars cloven apart.”</p><p>Samantha simmered like an ember.  She stroked up to one silken ear and tweaked fondly.  “When the fire of midsummer faded, ice misting over the horizon,” she combed the fringe from his brow.  “A single leaf turned a shade bright and brash as his hair.”  She bent to rub lips there.  “Perhaps they both knew it was ending.”</p><p>“Recollections blur.”  He lifted his chin.  “Objects disappear into the distance.”</p><p>“And love and truth share a vein like a bloodline,” she recited, tracing that soft, tapered shell.  “I remember.”</p><p>His smile was resplendent, his voice sultry-smooth.  “Transposition.”  Subtly between them, a hitched, purring hum.  “You listened so intently.”</p><p>Ice and fire in her chest—weight and whimsy.  She let her gaze linger on his features; traced, too-long, the lush curve of his mouth.  “I always listened, Raha.”  She huffed and pecked his lips.  “You ridiculous—”</p><p>Magick crackled around them.  Her back was to the column, his arms at her waist, his mouth open, reaching, <em>impulse tempted to ignition—</em></p><p>
  <em>Vanish.</em>
</p><p>She cupped his face between her hands and bowed to kiss him.  Behind the aetherveil, the chatter of the symposium dwindled.  “I never had the courage to tell you,” she whispered.  “Never knew how—when I was scared, so badly, of the ending—” Her voice cracked, and she swallowed.</p><p>For what would she have been without him, after? </p><p>Bones and ash and faded petals, splintered by his arrow—</p><p>
  <em>Steady now, and listen.</em>
</p><p>“You showed me.”  He kissed her again.  “It was enough.”</p><p>There were tears in her eyes; a wetness on his face.  She was sure it belonged to them both.</p><p>“I am so sorry, Samantha,” he exhaled.  “For every way that I betrayed you.”</p><p>“I know.”  She raked both hands down the back of his neck; kissed the saltwater off his freckles.  “You can stop apologizing, now.”</p><p>For a moment, they rested, breath to breath and brow to brow.  Then a thought bubbled up from the cauldron of her heart.  “What is an ending, after all—to the gaze of history, unblinking?”</p><p>The scholar laughed breathlessly, helplessly, brightly.  “Merely another beginning.”</p><p> </p><p>☄ ☽ ✧ ☾ ☄</p>
<hr/><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Happy autumn, everyone.  </p><p>Did I purposefully compose this over the transition of summer to fall?  Was it my dastardly plan all along?  I'll never tell.</p><p>This was a challenging (wink) and beautiful experience.  I learned so much about my process as a writer and absolutely cannot wait to feast upon the blessings this month has created!  You are incredible.  Thank you for reading, writing, commenting, and otherwise existing in my general direction.  I love you all so very, very much.</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you for reading!  As a writer, I always hope to deliver, and keep you coming back for more!  </p><p>All of this riffs on my body of works, especially <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/series/862848">those surrounding Samantha</a>.  Her "main story" is my longfic, <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/12599668/chapters/28699292">Astral Fire, Umbral Heart</a>.  Meanwhile, much more G'raha can be found in (big 5.0 spoilers) <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/19782502/chapters/46832398">Interscintillance</a>.</p><p>If you enjoyed anything in particular, please leave me a comment!  I'm very friendly and feedback gives me life ♡ </p><p>You can also find me in the <a href="https://discord.gg/enabling-debauched-xivfic">Book Club.</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
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